[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)