[HN Gopher] Google Maps launches Street View in India
___________________________________________________________________
Google Maps launches Street View in India
Author : webmobdev
Score : 127 points
Date : 2022-07-27 15:33 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nasdaq.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nasdaq.com)
| [deleted]
| ajakate wrote:
| It's interesting to see how certain regulatory requirements of
| countries can disrupt the ubiquity of google maps. For the
| longest time South Korea looked completely different when you
| zoomed in on it in google maps. South Korea didn't want high-
| resolution map information to fall into the wrong hands, so they
| disallowed storing that kind of map data on foreign servers. I
| believe it was also hard/impossible to get driving directions
| [1].
|
| Curiously, I just checked gmaps and it appears to look normal
| now. This must have happened in the past few months, not sure why
| I can't seem to find any info online.
|
| [1]https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/one-thing-
| north-k...
| webmobdev wrote:
| > _It 's interesting to see how certain regulatory requirements
| of countries can disrupt the ubiquity of google maps._
|
| It was done for the right reasons - security. You don't want
| foreign governments to have data on physical government assets,
| especially military and critical infrastructure. Moreover, the
| Google street view vans also collect other data (including
| scanning for WiFi networks and collecting associated metadata)
| -
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285928324_The_Googl...
| ... I think it also collected atmospheric data (pollution
| levels etc).
| saagarjha wrote:
| Security is _a_ reason. It's not always the _right_ decision.
| webmobdev wrote:
| Here, I feel India has found a nice compromise - indian
| companies are allowed to get license to collect the street
| data, and others (including foreign companies like Google),
| can license it from them. This takes care of security
| concerns of the governments, creates more jobs, fosters a
| more competitive business environment (Google alone won't
| have the street data) and western investors can be relieved
| that the aim wasn't protectionism.
| abraham wrote:
| Google announced they would no longer collect wifi info with
| street view vehicles.
|
| https://publicpolicy.googleblog.com/2010/05/wifi-data-
| collec...
| solardev wrote:
| Google has a bad history of making "innocent" mistakes like
| this, always in favor of data collection. They just
| happened to be caught that time.
| drivebycomment wrote:
| Security was a blatant and transparent excuse for their
| protectionism. The same information has been and is available
| for practically anyone in the world, thanks to many different
| map service providers, satellite image providers, and even
| Korean map service companies making their service available
| outside Korea.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| I was somehow obsessed with this issue a few years ago for no
| good reason (I don't live in SK or have any tie to it), and
| wrote dozens of "feedbacks" to Google, despite knowing nothing
| would change. I guess I was just unreasonably irritated by this
| "imperfection".
|
| Anyway, it was fixed/changed last year!
| https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleMaps/comments/rb6gua/google_m...
| lolpython wrote:
| Really excited to see how this affects the Geoguessr[0] meta.
| This will be up there with Russia, Brazil, Turkey, USA, and
| Canada in that it can really make or break competitive games.
| Since the countries are so large and it can be difficult to tell
| which region you're in
|
| [0]: https://www.geoguessr.com/
| zichy wrote:
| Speaking of Geoguessr, I can definitely recommend Geotastic[1]
| - a free and donor-funded alternative.
|
| [1]: https://geotastic.net
| ytdytvhxgydvhh wrote:
| Thanks - I've been a longtime GeoGuessr dilettante but I'll
| check that out too!
| pradn wrote:
| If in urban areas, the presence of street signs in different
| languages will help in a multi-lingual country like India. The
| trees and terrain can also vary quite a bit, from arid to rain-
| forest.
| Arnavion wrote:
| A bunch of GeoGuessr streamers I watch can't tell the
| difference between Bangla and Sinhala/Tamil and basically do
| a 50-50 coin toss when it comes to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
| I look forward to them being even more befuddled by all the
| Devanagari variants.
| wholien wrote:
| Really? I feel like these two in written form are pretty
| different, and I don't have any real knowledge of South
| Asian languages.
|
| Personally I feel Thai and Lao are harder to tell apart
| (I've resorted to: Lao is more curvy, Thai uses more
| straight lines), and also how to tell apart Czech from
| Slovakian, or Danish from other Nordic languages. Of course
| there are other ways to tell where you are, and if you only
| rely on written language you will not become a great
| player.
|
| I'd watch GeoRainbolt[1] and all the pros that play in his
| tournaments.
|
| 1: https://georainbolt.com/
| Arnavion wrote:
| Yes, it's funny. It ought to be trivial to differentiate
| between Bangla and Sinhala/Tamil because Bangla has the
| top horizontal line joining letters of a word whereas
| Sinhala/Tamil have the round jalebi-like letters. But
| somehow the streamers always forget about it.
|
| (They're busy commentating, and they're not dedicated
| GeoGuessr streamers. It's understandable.)
|
| But even if they could, it will still be harder when it
| comes time to differentiate between Hindi / Gujarati /
| Marathi / Bangla etc, which is why I'm looking forward to
| it.
| googlryas wrote:
| Why would you waste your time watching such noobs? I can
| now read road signs in about 30 languages thanks to
| geoguessr. But, I don't stream.
| zichy wrote:
| Wow, you're a real badass.
| googlryas wrote:
| Not really, I'm slightly above average but outclassed by
| many geoguessrs. And it is useless since I'll most likely
| never use this knowledge outside of geoguessr.
|
| My point is that watching a geoguessr player who doesn't
| know how to interpret street signs is like watching a
| chess streamer who doesn't know about en passant. I guess
| if you're watching them for their humorous commentary or
| their cleavage, that's cool, but it hopefully is not
| because you think they're good players.
| zichy wrote:
| https://i.kym-
| cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/621/567/bdb...
| googlryas wrote:
| We don't do that here.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| I could say the same about your first message in this
| conversation. You don't seem to be concerned with them
| viewing good players and seem more concerned about
| appearing better than.
| rasz wrote:
| Sadly amount of garbage and dead animals will be a dead
| giveaway.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Of what? India is a large, densely-populated country.
| jobigoud wrote:
| My immediate thought as well. Please tell me they have region-
| based phone prefixes with an easy to learn arrangement. Brasil
| has this and it's very helpful. This will change the game for
| sure. No more "Obviously Bangladesh".
| ashineo wrote:
| Something I'm kinda interested in is how one might make a semi-
| complete, even locally, alternative to street view.
|
| It seems like something that could potentially be made much
| cheaper with a collection of drones with 360 cameras. they could
| all be programmed to fill out areas relatively quickly I think.
| It might not be street height which would be a bit of a loss, but
| an open dataset (with appropriate face/license plate/etc
| filtering) would be worth that I think.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| KartaView and Mapillary are open data Street View alternatives,
| though they mostly rely on dash cam footage, and thus often
| don't have fully panoramic views.
|
| There's also OpenDroneMap, which is more drone-focused and
| captures full 3d point clouds, but that still isn't quite the
| same as what you're proposing.
| Larrikin wrote:
| If the height is not street level, what's the niche that's
| being filled by that when we already have tons of satellite
| data.
| ashineo wrote:
| I dont mean that its above the buildings on streets just that
| it would probably need to be above car/van/lorry height to
| not get smashed
| Pakdef wrote:
| Probably could use the data from self driving cars, including
| lidar, to make something interesting.
| buildbot wrote:
| To this point, I have noticed amazon delivery vans in Seattle
| sporting with what looks like a LIDAR spinning on top...
| Pakdef wrote:
| Haven't seen that here in GA yet
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| India really needs its own Google Maps alternative. I spent a
| while living there and found the near universal dependence on
| Google Maps to get anywhere a scary amount of reliance on a
| foreign service. I worry a Google Maps outage, accidental or
| intensional, could have big consequences on many people's ability
| to navigate around. (Eventually people will get directions by
| just asking on the street, but that's gonna be really tough for
| drivers) Developers in India could make some really cool
| solutions to the different address system, provide more
| interesting sources of realtime data, and better support for
| local languages.
| diskiesk wrote:
| Of course there is OSM, but also Sygic navigation provides
| offline maps for whole world, including India. I believe there
| are also some other similar companies. I don't think we are all
| dependent on Google.
| hgazx wrote:
| To develop Google maps you need to pay engineers a Google
| salary, which is impossible anywhere but America.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| You can get quide good (or for some use cases superior)
| products.
|
| See
|
| - Organic Maps
|
| - OsmAnd
|
| - mapy.cz
|
| Note: Google has clearly better car routing and shop
| listings.
|
| But for cycling or hiking OSM is typically superior.
|
| And you can fix map if something is wrong.
| db1234 wrote:
| There is a cultural angle as well here. Unlike America,
| it's quite common and acceptable in India to just ask
| someone directions which helps with the last mile
| directions so India doesn't need a perfect map solution,
| just a good enough one.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| If the person doesn't know they may be too embarrassed to
| admit it and make something up. Which is why the last
| mile qualifier is crucial.
| nalinidash wrote:
| From my experience,if they do not know the route they say
| that frankly rather than making up something.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| You've never been to Lahore I'm guessing.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > Unlike America, it's quite common and acceptable in
| India to just ask someone directions
|
| What? What makes you think this is unacceptable in the
| US?
|
| I think most Americans _prefer_ to be independent and not
| have to ask someone, but it 's not really that rare.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Google maps is bad for hiking because they generate most of
| their map data from what the street view cars can see, and
| cars can't go down hiking trails.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| It is bad because it is niche not very profitable sector.
| At least not Google-scale profitable.
|
| And many hikers care A LOT about hiking and their maps.
| Hiking and cycling data in OSM is extremely good, as
| result of many such people being interested in project -
| as mappers and as users of data, including software
| creation.
| dudus wrote:
| This is just plainly wrong. Most of the data is licensed
| from third parties.
| politelemon wrote:
| What you're saying feels true for any place though. There's a
| huge reliance on their maps for getting around anywhere and
| similarly affected by availability.
|
| Open Street map exists as a dataset to build alternatives on,
| and I've seen a few like Maps.me which are pretty decent. But
| it does require crowd sourcing.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| Large parts of the former USSR are covered by 2gis.com, which
| has full offline capability. I think the last time I updated
| maps on my phone was a couple of years ago (although they
| publish monthly updates), and it still works fine.
| andrewshadura wrote:
| Maps.me is now known as Organic Maps.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| Or strictly speaking, it was forked by original authors
| after hostile takeover.
|
| Nice case of how open sourcing was useful.
| thriftwy wrote:
| China, Russia and South Korea have competing maps services
| for their countries. I wonder if Japan has some kind of Yahoo
| Maps.
|
| UPD: yes, they do, and these seem to be much better tailored
| at local audience from the first glance.
| stoicjumbotron wrote:
| Agreed. My dad always asks me what would happen if Maps was
| shut down? Do we have any alternative service? And I'm not able
| to give a concrete answer to his question.
|
| Sure there is OSM, but apart from pure locations (which are
| community led afaik) I don't know of any good reliable service
| for navigation not reliant on Google.
|
| Edit: Apart from Apple Maps as well. Just in case someone
| points out the major competitor.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Apple Maps wasn't super helpful for me when I was there. Even
| within cities. They don't have a big enough team on the
| ground (yet?) to detail the maps out
| webmobdev wrote:
| Apple maps isn't the real competitor to Google Maps in India.
| It is HERE - https://www.here.com/applications/wego ...
| Google was forced to offer offline maps in India and EU
| because the Here apps offered it for a long time. (Apple maps
| still doesn't but it has a slight advantage over Here in that
| it licensed data from JustDial, an online yellow pages
| services, and so it can show the location of many retail and
| other commercial outlets better). Here had Nokia as a
| stakeholder, but is now owned by consortium of EU automobile
| manufacturers.
| randomperson_24 wrote:
| Apple Maps is honestly no where close to Google Maps.
| Especially in dense Indian cities with multiple roads to
| reach a place, some roads are not even there on Apple Maps.
| It also (like OSM) lacks in contact details of businesses,
| open/close time, etc. which are a real value add for Google
| Maps.
|
| Hopefully some real competitor emerges.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| For OSM powered apps:
|
| - Organic Maps
|
| - OsmAnd
|
| - mapy.cz
|
| Note: Google has clearly better car routing and shop
| listings.
|
| But for cycling or hiking OSM is typically superior.
| yolo3000 wrote:
| All the map data of google is public, it's probably been
| copied/vectorized/etc, add some errors to it, remove some
| streets, shift the street a meter or two, you got a
| comparable service. Probably google has a lot of checksums in
| there to see if it's their data you're drawing, but since
| maps is almost an essential service I don't think they can
| abruptly remove it without consequences, one of which would
| be to allow a new service even on stolen data.
| solardev wrote:
| Scraping Google's maps tile by tile would take forever, and
| you'd never be able to keep up with the daily changes
| submitted by users, much less the network effects (traffic,
| live busyness, reviews, speed traps, etc.)
| maxerickson wrote:
| OpenStreetMap data is better for routing than it is for
| location lookups.
|
| In the US, there will be the occasional problem where some
| local street detail is wrong, but things like inter-city
| routing work great. You can do it on device with several
| different apps, and there are several different providers
| selling route calculation as a service that use OpenStreetMap
| data.
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| There's an Android app called StreetComplete that asks
| users to fill in information about stuff that's around
| them, and uploads it to OSM. For example, verifying street
| numbers on buildings, down to verifying the material the
| sidewalks are made of.
| vvs29 wrote:
| MapMyIndia does pretty well in the cities at least. I haven't
| tried it out in tier3 cities and rural areas. Though the
| traffic information is still better with Google Maps.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Have you ever tried asking for directions on the street in
| India?
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| My wife has! It always takes at least 3 people to point you
| in the right way
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| Nokia used to have a first class maps offering in India about a
| decade (more?) ago. Really well done and complete, for the
| time. They also had proper voice navigation, even in Indian
| languages.
|
| But the problem with vendor locked services is that they tend
| to go down with the vendor. That's why we need a separation
| between the OS providers, device manufacturers and software
| providers.
| webmobdev wrote:
| It still exists; Nokia sold it, and now some EU automobile
| manufacturers own it and maintain it well -
| https://wego.here.com/ (apps for both android and ios are
| available, and you can download maps for offline use
| statewise or for whole of india). English only though.
| supreme_berry wrote:
| Imnimo wrote:
| I miss the days when Google Maps was frequently adding
| (relatively) dense coverage for new countries. I guess they
| decided the economics weren't there for it.
| jmsflknr wrote:
| Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32247493
| z9znz wrote:
| I doubt the excuse of "security concerns". I think it's more
| likely that the government didn't want it to be so easy for the
| rest of the world to see what life was like on the ground. Taking
| random clicks through Street View, it looks postapocalyptic.
|
| (I'm not blaming it on the people, although I think littering is
| a choice; almost certainly this is a top-down problem, where
| corruption in all levels of government is bleeding so much
| financing away from the people that public services are not
| operating anywhere close to their potential.)
| [deleted]
| ra7 wrote:
| This makes zero sense. India isn't North Korea. If you want to
| see what life on the ground is like, you can just... visit the
| country. No one's stopping anyone from doing that.
|
| The security concerns may be overblown (although I can
| understand why given so many terror attacks in the past), but
| stopping non-Indian companies from mapping the country so rest
| of world shouldn't see the littering sounds like nonsense.
| z9znz wrote:
| > you can just... visit the country
|
| Obviously. But it's considerably easier for anyone with an
| internet connection to now be able to take a virtual tour;
| thus, it is much more exposed.
|
| What the street views illustrate is how far behind the key
| infrastructure is. With a population that is motivated and
| willing to work hard, it suggests failures at the government
| level. This has been a global topic for 10 years, but it does
| not seem to have changed much (while the population has
| significantly increased).
|
| Street views everywhere just make it easier for management
| failures to be seen and analyzed. This will hopefully result
| in some changes and improvements.
| paxunix wrote:
| Some time ago I had asked one of my Indian friends (who
| manages a software team in India and the US and has
| travelled the world, so he has a varied perspective) what
| he thinks is the biggest barrier to India's advancement? He
| said "Corruption. The bureaucracy and the government have
| so much corruption at so many levels". This sounds like a
| different way to state your mention of "management
| failures". Hopefully the additional worldwide scrutiny is a
| motivator for change.
| ra7 wrote:
| I think you're really overestimating Street View's impact.
| Anyone remotely interested in India is already aware of how
| far behind the key infrastructure is and how governments
| have failed them. Street View is the last thing they will
| be looking at for confirmation.
|
| Governments haven't cared about failures when actual users
| of the infrastructure (Indian citizens) have complained.
| Things aren't going to change because Google is now showing
| how streets look like for someone outside India.
| bergenty wrote:
| It looks just like Thailand, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Brazil etc.
| It's not post apocalyptic, that's what a lower standard of
| living looks like. It's also deceptive. I would say Mumbai is
| an amazing place to live in, but it wouldn't be for someone
| from the first world that looks for very specific metrics of
| standard. It's chaotic but it gets the fundamentals right. It's
| safe, it's an economic powerhouse and you can find literally
| anything you would in the first world.
| z9znz wrote:
| > Thailand
|
| I disagree. Granted Thailand is big, and Bangkok itself is
| huge, so I've only seen small parts of a few cities in the
| country. But while I definitely saw poverty and ramshackle
| structures, litter was relatively minor. In fact, I've seen
| worse litter in places in some regions of western Europe.
| I've definitely seen some bad litter in places in large US
| cities.
|
| I've never seen anything like this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7O0jbTRD7Y
|
| edit - I challenged myself to try to find some really dirty
| parts of bangkok in street view. I didn't find a good example
| yet, but I had to laugh when while searching for an example
| of litter, I instead found a woman cleaning trash - https://w
| ww.google.com/maps/@13.7627877,100.4965608,3a,64.2y...
| kc10 wrote:
| I can see Street view for few certain areas in Hyderabad. But few
| areas still show a black screen or I can't navigate the street
| view. Probably still WIP.
|
| Given the population density, once all the faces and number
| plates are blurred out the street views are a lot more blurry.
| But I am really excited to see this.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| official blog post: https://blog.google/intl/en-
| in/products/explore-communicate/...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| What does it mean to "launch Street View"? Some street view
| imagery has been available for several years in some areas. E.g.
| Hitec City in Hyderabad.
|
| Are they trying to say that now it will become a formal effort to
| send cameras down every street in every city?
| Anunayj wrote:
| Most of these street view imagery was done by private
| individuals, in private spaces. Security and Privacy concerns
| didn't allow google to send Google's camera down the streets
| snapping pictures. Which imo is not a bad position to take, I
| wonder what changed.
| kensai wrote:
| Germany's still waiting, don't sweat it...
| elcombato wrote:
| The Streetview equivalent of Apple Maps was rolled out very
| recently in Germany. The coverage is impressively good. Even
| small villages are covered.
| bla3 wrote:
| They're not waiting, they didn't want it
|
| https://www.androidpolice.com/apple-google-street-view-germa...
| is a pretty good writeup on things.
| godelmachine wrote:
| Just an FYI - Google did make an attempt to launch Street View
| more than a decade ago in India but had to cave in
|
| Ref -
| https://web.archive.org/web/20110629104228/http://hken.ibtim...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-07-27 23:00 UTC)