Bing Maps Streetside Imagery Now Integrated into OpenStreetMap iD Editor (opens in new tab)

Of course it’s an attack on Google Maps, and that’s a good thing. People should be happy to have Microsoft’s help in fighting Google because Google is much scarier than Microsoft these days.

It's not new. MS allows the OSM community to trace from Bing aerial imagery since 2010! And from 2007 till 2011 Yahoo allowed tracing from their aerial imagery. These have been very very helpful to OSM.

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bing_Maps https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Aerial_Imagery

It's actually trivially easy to switch from Google search and maps, just type in a different URL or change a setting on your browser. It's only "hard" because the alternatives are just not as good. The fact the the alternatives have to work so hard to stay competitive might suggest that open data intensive apps just aren't as good of a model for delivering quality content. We've seen this play out before with the iOS and Mac OS X hatred before tech folks turned from hating MS to Apple to now, Google/FB.

The article’s title is: Bing Maps Streetside Imagery Now Integrated into OpenStreetMap iD Editor.

The current title here on HN which is just wrong is: Microsoft contributed 5PB street view data to OpenStreetMap.

Yes, I don't believe they are licensing the data.

(edit: my mistake, there is a license of sorts, see the comment below)

Exactly. The title is pretty bad. All they are doing is displaying the data in one particular editor. It's like displaying google streetmaps in another window when you edited open streetmaps - there is no "contribution" of data at all.

> it’s strange

it's not. They've lost their dominant position (mind-share wise at least) and is clamouring to get it back. Google, on the other hand, has gained a dominant position, and got complacent lately; and people are starting to lose faith in them.

But in the end, the goal is to ensure they have good PR.

You don't need to like them, just continue to hold the stock you bought when Ballmer stepped down. It will probably be obvious when it's time to sell.

Microsoft gave OSM permission to use their aerial imagery for tracing in November 2010. If you look at this as a continuation of that it isn't terribly recent.

Microsoft is big in the public sector in Europe, as in, really really big. Open street map is big in the public sector in Europe, as in really really big.

It’s probably not related, but who knows.

It's both. Microsoft is all in on cloud services and infrastructure. They want full ecosystem for Azure customers, and GeoAPIs are important for many users. Next, with upcoming HoloLens they want devs to create some amazing real-time lens apps.

There's OpenStreetCam, but it isn't a whole lot different than Mapillary.

I think it will be a while before there is a community project accepting many gigabytes of photos every day.

Why not Mapillary?

Moovit uses OpenStreetMap to generate its map tiles, Citymapper uses it for its walking and perhaps cycling directions. OSMAnd has quite good tools for visualising public transport routes, for instance you can plot subway routes on top of the street map, and you can select bus stops, see the buses stopping there, then select the route and see its full path and all stops mapped.

Transportr is an alternative, but it's still a long way to go to compete with Google Maps, Citymapper and the like.

https://transportr.grobox.de/

I think Maps.Me did something in that direction - but well, the quality of the underlying data varies wildly. Google can (and IMHO does) periodically pay for licensing the transport data, OSM doesn't do that (for cost and license compatibility, amongst other things). Not all PT authorities are amenable to open data :(

It does seem genuine...but the fear of another SCO-like submarine lingers.