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0 pointsblrgeek13y ago0 comments

From what I've heard, Google had an army of around 1000+ contract workers in Hyderabad, India, cleaning up the data for about 5 years. If anything 400 man-years sounds low :)

This is apart from MapMaker, and their dev teams, and their software improvements.

For instance, if you look at directions in India now, they're awesome, since they tell you landmarks to look for on the way [pass by * on left], at the intersections, etc. http://goo.gl/maps/b8w15 for instance.

My guess is 95% will take 3-4 years - once they accept they have a problem.

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dvanduzer13y ago

I don't think 3-4 years is a crazy estimate. This is pretty cutting edge stuff. If you hadn't already seen it, the Atlantic piece on the technology is a fantastic read: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/how-go...

On the other hand, this actually is one of the rarer problems where throwing 10,000 contract workers from India for 5 months could solve much of the problem, especially since Google has already paved the way on the harder parts.

What I really want to see is a serious quality comparison between Apple and OSM.

edit: And the million dollar question... How much of Google's map data was correlated/verified against iPhone positioning data?

maxerickson13y ago

Does the position data provide any information beyond "phone was within a meter or two"?

I can see how that would help reveal issues, but I don't see how it would help much in fixing them.

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