Why people don’t wanna switch from Gmaps (maybe at best a client app):

  • Gmaps has a monopoly on the navigation industry because of one thing: Bussness hours and reviews. It has been that way for years, and the only real alternative for this is Vela Maps, which is vibe-coded (or AI-made), until now

Competition arrives

  • A new project, called “Mangrove Reviews”, has been quietly growing on the scenes and has been doing revoews for the FOSS industry, giving Google Maps SOME sort of competition, even if it’s not to the level of straight rivalry
  • This service, tho, isn’t enough to turn the tides. However, navigation services like MapComplete and CoMaps have been slowly working with them to finally bring convenience for navigation for the more newer or unfamiliar de-googlers

Is this real competition yet?

  • We can’t know for sure. As stated in the latest CoMaps article (as of Oct 30th 2026), this is very niche. Competition for certain monoloplies have varying levels of success. Godot has succeeded on rivaling other game engines like Unreal or Unity, while attempts at YouTube altermatives like PeerTube only moderately succeeded. Mangrove Reviews, as far as I can tell, seems to be a very new project, so we can’t know for sure. We just gptta hope they succeed

Links and sources:

Info source:

CoMaps download:

MapComplete:

Mangrove:

  • Valerie Ashborne@feddit.org
    6·
    1 day ago

    A new project, called “Mangrove Reviews”, has been quietly

    Calling it a new project is a bit of an stretch, I would say, considering this project was around for maybe 6 or so years.

    Also, for anyone unaware, mangrove is not only for reviews of places, but also websites, books, companies. Found a bad site which scams people? Write an review. Found bad company? Review it.

    I wish there were more options, such as videogames, software, food and non food (Open Food Facts can be used for identification, in similar vein that OpenStreetMaps is used for places), and more (and more then 1000 symbols per review in general), but currently we have only that.

    Why people don’t wanna switch from Gmaps

    I do not want to be that person but I think the main reason is people do not give a fuck about any of that. Or just in general not giving enough fucks for anything.

    They have working shit on their devices (in this case — Google Maps), which do what they want and have many features, which varies from “nice to have” to “this is very important to me to the point of not being able to live without this feature”. Traffic data, reviews, and so on.

    And when you try to introduce something else to them (especially something as fragmented as open source real life data “stack”, OpenStreetMaps + mangrove reviews + transitious + more) — you would not be meet with enthusiasm, especially if this other service is just worse for one or other reason.

    What is the point if they want to input some address in, for example, CoMaps, and they get nothing in return because nobody had added that place and address for 10 years and doing address search is hard? (Both of which Google happened to master to a much higher degree then OpenStreetMaps).

    However, navigation services like MapComplete and CoMaps

    Calling MapComplete an navigation service is definitely a choice. Or CoMaps for that matter, conspidering that they currently are not providing much of an navigational services for public transport, and that their routing engine sometimes can lead with the most weird paths (but this one is more of an issue with OpenStreetMaps data, which only highlights my previous point).

    is this real competition yet?

    Right now it is definitely not. Many-many-many places lack even single review which says “good place”, so for the most of time you do not even notice that service.

    Godot has succeeded on rivaling other game engines like Unreal or Unity

    Eh… Maybe in indie, sure, it might shaked Unity somewhat, but many games still made with Unity and other proprietary engines. Big studios still on Unreal and some even switching from their in-house engines to Unreal, so eh.

      • Valerie Ashborne@feddit.org
        3·
        19 hours ago

        Eh, even in context of tech-savvy users it is still questionable. It is not like tech-savvy users do not need to get from place to place in time with public transport or an car, they are just a regular people, just like non savvy folks.

        I, for example, could consider myself one (tech savvy), but even I can not deny that this projects and services kind of… stink, and not usable as big corpo solutions.

        Do not get me wrong, I am in love with OpenStreetMaps, with Open Food Facts (and related projects like open prices facts), with Mangrove Reviews, and so on, and I contribute when I feel like it, but damn me if there would had been usable programs and UIs for using Transitious service (and especially with fully offline functionality), or program that use Open Food Facts data for anything even remotely useful (I once made feature request to CoMaps about adding open food facts data, so it can be used for searching food and non-food items on map or opening place and scrolling through list of items it has with prices, but this PR was quickly closed as too niche ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ , and then couple months later we have mangrove reviews, which is even more niche and has even less data but hey, what do I know), and for other related projects.

    • OppositeMeaning@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      1 day ago

      Thanks for correcting me. I figured the MapComplete was just a map editor before you commented but I was lazy too edit my post. Also, the wording on the Gmaps switch part is a bit vague. Once again, too lazy to edit my post

  • evin@lemmy.ml
    15·
    2 days ago

    i don’t think business hours and reviews are the main google maps has a monopoly. as someone who occasionally uses both google maps and openstreetmap, the main reason i use google maps is because it’s just more reliable - some points of interest aren’t on openstreetmap, and its search doesn’t work consistently. i rarely actually use google maps for business hours, and never reviews.

  • Don_alForno@feddit.org
    4·
    1 day ago

    Google maps has traffic info. That’s the reason.

    I’m aware that this is because it uses it’s user’s data for it which seems to make it impossible to mimic the feature for privacy friendly alternatives, but it’s the killer feature nonetheless.

      • tazeycrazy@feddit.ukEnglish
        1·
        15 hours ago

        It’s always fun when the bypass is technically 5 minutes slower but only in you can drive though downtown at 30 with no reds or other cars.

        • Don_alForno@feddit.org
          2·
          19 hours ago

          For those same 99% I don’t need a maps app anyway. I need one when I’m going farther away and then I’d also like to know which route is the least clogged.

  • Auster@thebrainbin.org
    213·
    2 days ago

    Post sounds either like an ad piece, the bullet points of a sales pitch, or a LLM summary.

      • eldavi@lemmy.mlEnglish
        214·
        2 days ago

        don’t listen to them – the anti-ai hysteria is everywhere.

        • Starya67@lemmy.world
          124·
          2 days ago

          If you’re not against something that destroys the environment, drives up energy prices and steals from artists and scientists you’re a bit of a twat.

          • Hugucinogens@lemmy.blahaj.zone
            4·
            2 days ago

            You’re not wrong, and I think that calling it a hysteria is bad, but there’s is a degree where people hate LLMs the tool, instead of the actual, real capitalist companies that took the actual actions of stealing, building the data centres that fuck communities over, and aiding the literal fascist takeover.

            And in this specific case, for this specific post, I feel that it’s paranoia, conflating bullet points, titles, and generally competent markdown usage, with LLM usage. Nothing in the actual content of this post is disagreeable in my opinion, knowing CoMaps and having heard the new review platform too.

            I think even if LLMs were used in this post (which I think they weren’t, but hey), I wouldn’t complain, because the content is not slop.

            • OppositeMeaning@lemmy.worldOP
              2·
              2 days ago

              Hey, I didn’t use AI. No need to wprry. Never used AI for anything digital outside of research. Even then, this post only contains human research

  • Padit@feddit.org
    7·
    2 days ago

    I use “Here We Go”, at least as a navigation system for my car. It is backed by european cat companies, so it has all the traffic data, sometimes even better then google.

    I am aware that its not perfect, since it is also controlled by companies and not open source, but it works very well and at least its not google.

  • qweertz@programming.dev
    113·
    2 days ago

    Vela Maps is the best way to get accurate information about traffic and opening hours while interacting with Google only as little as you have to

    It’s like NewPipe but for GMaps

    • Unusable 3151 ⁂@lemmy.ml
      18·
      2 days ago

      you mean Vela Maps? I can’t find Vera Maps anywhere.

      If you meant Vela, it’s a month old, and it’s CLAUDE.md file contains instructions to obscure how LLMs were actually used in the generation of the code for the project. I’ll pass.

      • qweertz@programming.dev
        54·
        2 days ago

        yes Vela Maps, typo

        it works great and I use it whenever OSMAnd isn’t enough or just simply unsuitable (finding restaurants e.g.).

        It’s up to you if you’d rather use GMaps directly or just pass on important information like that OFC

        • Unusable 3151 ⁂@lemmy.ml
          52·
          2 days ago

          …or just live without live traffic information and get the other info from business websites

          traffic info is a nice-to-have, sure, but I’ve used just OSMand+ for years and it’s never really been an issue.

          adresilo is a good way to get access to Google place data anonymously, if you feel like you need it. I used it a lot at first when it was a novelty, and now I use it about ~10 times per year.

          • WhoIzDisIz@lemmy.today
            3·
            2 days ago

            Sorry, but traffic info is an absolute must-have if you drive for a living. Even if you don’t, getting stuck in traffic jams is a waste of fuel/energy, time, & sanity. It also is dependent upon where you are as some areas are better engineered for traffic issues than others (the older the major city, the worse it tends to be - it’s particularly bad in the northeastern US).

          • WhoIzDisIz@lemmy.today
            2·
            2 days ago

            You can anonymously get Google place data free (unlike your suggestion) by opening maps in a browser like Firefox Focus that forgets everything each time you exit it. You can also use one of a few apps on F-Droid like GMaps WV that use an isolated webview to do similarly (although you should be aware this is less secure than Firefox Focus because WebRTC can’t be blocked this way & the app’s cache must be manually cleared).

              • WhoIzDisIz@lemmy.today
                4·
                2 days ago

                I’ve been using it off & on. While it’s gotten better, it’s still a bit much of a battery-killer, comparatively speaking. It’s surprising how decent it is, but that’s definitely preventing me from adopting it full time yet.

                Also, I find it copying Google too closely. For example, I’ve never understood why we can’t just get directions without all the “alerts” that are over-reported by people just for Internet points. I hate already being a mile into a ten-mile construction zone, and being told there’s “construction ahead” repeatedly throughout the rest of the construction. It’s just so stupid and incredibly annoying. It’d be really nice to have the ability to select which warnings get spoken, and maybe disable all warnings for a selectable period (like 10 or 20 mins or miles).

                There’s other stuff, too, but they’re far more minor to me. Until the battery sucking issue is resolved, I just can’t be bothered. I’m keeping an eye on it, though.

    • unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
      2·
      2 days ago

      I assume this is different to newpipe in an important way though. Newpipe is one-way, you just download video files through it. But in this case you effectively need to send your location to someone or its not gonna be able to supply you with information about traffic close to you.

      • jdr@lemmy.ml
        11·
        2 days ago

        Or you just download the file for the area you’re interested in, same as how the map works

      • smeg@feddit.ukEnglish
        1·
        14 hours ago

        Debated by who? Even ten years ago I remember navigating on a long drive and it automatically redirecting me to avoid a massive traffic jam. Even now that’s incredibly useful, back then it was absolute sci-fi!

        As for business reviews I don’t think I’ve ever used that, why would I want to just read ads and paid comments?

        • OppositeMeaning@lemmy.worldOP
          0·
          14 hours ago

          “Reading ads and paid comments” Ok then your logic says that my post is a paid post or an ad which IT ISN’T. Not EVERY review is sponsored

      • qweertz@programming.dev
        51·
        2 days ago

        Why whom? I don’t even have a license and still I’d say it’s a must have for longer trips

    • OppositeMeaning@lemmy.worldOP
      3·
      2 days ago

      CoMaps does not let you directly review in the app just yet, however they said they are going to plan on doing it. For now, you can do it in mapcomplete

  • Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works
    41·
    2 days ago

    I’m really happy with Organic Maps and not ready to switch unless something really better gets created, but I’d love something like this to be integrated in it.