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This is an article on why you should stop using Google Maps, Google Earth, and Google Streetview + find a more efficient, privacy-focused, and open alternative.
04.0 - Contributions to false inprisonments
05.0 - Other things to check out
Like other Google products, Google Maps/Earth/Streetview has a history of privacy and performance issues. This service has much greater privacy concerns than other products, as Google can still collect data on you without using their product (if you get near one of the many cameras)
General description from Wikipedia: Google Maps - Data from Februry 22nd 2021 at 8:22:31 pm (PT: Pacific Time)
Google Maps is a web mapping service developed by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panoramic views of streets (Street View), real-time traffic conditions, and route planning for traveling by foot, car, bicycle, air (in beta) and public transportation. In 2020, Google Maps was used by over 1 billion people every month.
Google Maps began as a C++ desktop program at Where 2 Technologies. In October 2004, the company was acquired by Google, which converted it into a web application. After additional acquisitions of a geospatial data visualization company and a real time traffic analyzer, Google Maps was launched in February 2005. The service's front end utilizes JavaScript, XML, and Ajax. Google Maps offers an API that allows maps to be embedded on third-party websites, and offers a locator for businesses and other organizations in numerous countries around the world. Google Map Maker allowed users to collaboratively expand and update the service's mapping worldwide but was discontinued from March 2017. However, crowdsourced contributions to Google Maps were not discontinued as the company announced those features would be transferred to the Google Local Guides program.
Google Maps' satellite view is a "top-down" or bird's-eye view; most of the high-resolution imagery of cities is aerial photography taken from aircraft flying at 800 to 1,500 feet (240 to 460 m), while most other imagery is from satellites. Much of the available satellite imagery is no more than three years old and is updated on a regular basis. Google Maps previously used a variant of the Mercator projection, and therefore could not accurately show areas around the poles. In August 2018, the desktop version of Google Maps was updated to show a 3D globe. It is still possible to switch back to the 2D map in the settings.
Google Maps for Android and iOS devices was released in September 2008 and features GPS turn-by-turn navigation along with dedicated parking assistance features. In August 2013, it was determined to be the world's most popular app for smartphones, with over 54% of global smartphone owners using it at least once.
In 2012, Google reported having over 7,100 employees and contractors directly working in mapping.
In May 2017, the app has reported to have 2 billion users on Android, along with several other Google services including YouTube, Chrome, Gmail, Search, and Google Play, Google Maps reached over 1 billion monthly users.
General description from Wikipedia: Google Earth - Data from Februry 22nd 2021 at 8:24:10 pm (PT: Pacific Time)
Google Earth is a computer program, formerly known as Keyhole EarthViewer, that renders a 3D representation of Earth based primarily on satellite imagery. The program maps the Earth by superimposing satellite images, aerial photography, and GIS data onto a 3D globe, allowing users to see cities and landscapes from various angles. Users can explore the globe by entering addresses and coordinates, or by using a keyboard or mouse. The program can also be downloaded on a smartphone or tablet, using a touch screen or stylus to navigate. Users may use the program to add their own data using Keyhole Markup Language and upload them through various sources, such as forums or blogs. Google Earth is able to show various kinds of images overlaid on the surface of the earth and is also a Web Map Service client. Recently Google has revealed that Google Earth now covers more than 98 percent of the world, and has captured 10 million miles of Street View imagery, a distance that could circle the globe more than 400 times.
In addition to Earth navigation, Google Earth provides a series of other tools through the desktop application. Additional globes for the Moon and Mars are available, as well as a tool for viewing the night sky. A flight simulator game is also included. Other features allow users to view photos from various places uploaded to Panoramio, information provided by Wikipedia on some locations, and Street View imagery. The web-based version of Google Earth also includes Voyager, a feature that periodically adds in-program tours, often presented by scientists and documentarians.
Google Earth has been viewed by some as a threat to privacy and national security, leading to the program being banned in multiple countries. Some countries have requested that certain areas be obscured in Google's satellite images, usually areas containing military facilities.
General description from Wikipedia: Google Streetview - Data from Februry 22nd 2021 at 8:24:35 pm (PT: Pacific Time)
Google Street View is a technology featured in Google Maps and Google Earth that provides interactive panoramas from positions along many streets in the world. It was launched in 2007 in several cities in the United States, and has since expanded to include cities and rural areas worldwide. Streets with Street View imagery available are shown as blue lines on Google Maps.
Google Street View displays interactively panoramas of stitched VR photographs. Most photography is done by car, but some is done by tricycle, boat, snowmobile, and underwater apparatus, as well as on foot.
Google has a very very bad record when it comes to user privacy. (I could go on and on with evidence of this, but it took a long time to find and go through all these articles)
Privacy on Google products is always bad, due to all Google products containing spyware.
No matter what you do, when you are using Google, all of your sensitive personal data is being sent to Google and others. Google has also been spotted going through open programs. For example, from personal experience (on Firefox) with a YouTube tab open that I didn't visit, I watched several videos offline (VLC Media Player) Later when I went to check the recommendations, it was nearly everything that I had watched. There is no doubt they are spying on other programs too.
In Chrome (and many other browsers) an incognito mode is present. In Chrome, this mode is pointless, as Google will still mine your data. Even if you turn data mining/tracking off, and enable the "do not track" signal, surprise suprise, Google is still mining your data.
If you think you have nothing to hide, you are absolutely wrong. This argument has been debunked many times over:
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Edward Snowden remarked "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say. "When you say, ‘I have nothing to hide,’ you’re saying, ‘I don’t care about this right.’ You’re saying, ‘I don’t have this right, because I’ve got to the point where I have to justify it.’ The way rights work is, the government has to justify its intrusion into your rights."
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Daniel J. Solove stated in an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education that he opposes the argument; he stated that a government can leak information about a person and cause damage to that person, or use information about a person to deny access to services even if a person did not actually engage in wrongdoing, and that a government can cause damage to one's personal life through making errors. Solove wrote "When engaged directly, the nothing-to-hide argument can ensnare, for it forces the debate to focus on its narrow understanding of privacy. But when confronted with the plurality of privacy problems implicated by government data collection and use beyond surveillance and disclosure, the nothing-to-hide argument, in the end, has nothing to say."
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Adam D. Moore, author of Privacy Rights: Moral and Legal Foundations, argued, "it is the view that rights are resistant to cost/benefit or consequentialist sort of arguments. Here we are rejecting the view that privacy interests are the sorts of things that can be traded for security." He also stated that surveillance can disproportionately affect certain groups in society based on appearance, ethnicity, sexuality, and religion.
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Bruce Schneier, a computer security expert and cryptographer, expressed opposition, citing Cardinal Richelieu's statement "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged", referring to how a state government can find aspects in a person's life in order to prosecute or blackmail that individual. Schneier also argued "Too many wrongly characterize the debate as 'security versus privacy.' The real choice is liberty versus control."
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Harvey A. Silverglate estimated that the common person, on average, unknowingly commits three felonies a day in the US.
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Emilio Mordini, philosopher and psychoanalyst, argued that the "nothing to hide" argument is inherently paradoxical. People do not need to have "something to hide" in order to hide "something". What is hidden is not necessarily relevant, claims Mordini. Instead, he argues an intimate area which can be both hidden and access-restricted is necessary since, psychologically speaking, we become individuals through the discovery that we could hide something to others.
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Julian Assange stated "There is no killer answer yet. Jacob Appelbaum (@ioerror) has a clever response, asking people who say this to then hand him their phone unlocked and pull down their pants. My version of that is to say, 'well, if you're so boring then we shouldn't be talking to you, and neither should anyone else', but philosophically, the real answer is this: Mass surveillance is a mass structural change. When society goes bad, it's going to take you with it, even if you are the blandest person on earth."
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Ignacio Cofone, law professor, argues that the argument is mistaken in its own terms because, whenever people disclose relevant information to others, they also disclose irrelevant information. This irrelevant information has privacy costs and can lead to other harms, such as discrimination.
Google Maps/Earth/Streetview is the same as all other Google products, it contains spyware, as Google is not just a search company, they are a user data company, and you are the product. To Google, you are only worth about $700.00 (unless you are making them ad revenue) This software is more blatantly obvious in its surveillance, and is harder to get away from. Places should be opted out by default with no Terms of Service nonsense, as allowing them to automatically record things before telling them no opens the door for everyone else to do the same thing, including extremely obscure companies having to be opted out on.
Google Maps/Google Earth/Google Streetview is a mapping service. Due to its monopoly on location and geographical data, the alternates listed below aren't currently a 100% alternate (data that would be missing would be all the individual places having pictures to go with them, and no live broadcasting of everyones houses)
OpenStreetMap OpenStreet map is a free and open-source map solution by the OpenStreetMapM Foundation that is prominent. It is used by many people. Excerpt from Wikipedia: OpenStreetMaps as of Monday, February 22nd 2021 at 8:31:38 PST (Pacific Standard Time)
A variety of popular services incorporate some sort of geolocation or map-based component. Notable services using OSM for this include:
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Apple Inc. unexpectedly created an OpenStreetMap-based map for iPhoto for iOS on 7 March 2012, and launched the maps without properly citing the data source – though this was corrected in 1.0.1. OpenStreetMap is one of the many cited sources for Apple's custom maps in iOS 6, though the majority of map data is provided by TomTom.
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Craigslist switched to OpenStreetMap in 2012, rendering their own tiles based on the data.
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Ballardia (games developer) launched World of the Living Dead: Resurrection in October 2013, which has incorporated OpenStreetMap into its game engine, along with census information to create a browser-based game mapping over 14,000 square kilometres of greater Los Angeles and survival strategy gameplay. Its previous incarnation had used Google Maps, which had proven incapable of supporting high volumes of players, so during 2013 they shut down the Google Maps version and ported the game to OSM.
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Facebook uses the map directly in its website/mobile app (depending on the zoom level, the area and the device).
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Flickr uses OpenStreetMap data for various cities around the world, including Baghdad, Beijing, Kabul, Santiago, Sydney and Tokyo. In 2012, the maps switched to use Nokia data primarily, with OSM being used in areas where the commercial provider lacked performance.
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Foursquare started using OpenStreetMap via Mapbox's rendering and infrastructure of OSM.
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Geotab uses OpenStreetMap data in their Vehicle Tracking Software platform, MyGeotab.
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Hasbro, the toy company behind the real estate-themed board game Monopoly, launched Monopoly City Streets, a massively multiplayer online game (MMORPG) which allowed players to "buy" streets all over the world. The game used map tiles from Google Maps and the Google Maps API to display the game board, but the underlying street data was obtained from OpenStreetMap. The online game was a limited time offering, its servers were shut down in the end of January 2010.
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Mapbox
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MapQuest announced a service based on OpenStreetMap in 2010, which eventually became MapQuest Open.
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Moovit uses maps based on OpenStreetMap in their free mobile application for public transit navigation.
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Niantic switched to OSM based maps from Google Maps on 1 December 2017 for their games Ingress and Pokémon Go.
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Nominatim (from the Latin, 'by name') is a tool to search OSM data by name and address (geocoding) and then to generate synthetic addresses of OSM points (reverse geocoding).
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OpenGeofiction is a geofiction website that uses the OpenStreetMap software but instead of the Earth, it has the map of a fictional planet. When signing up, users can only edit certain countries specifically marked as available for everyone. After at least seven days (pending approval from staff), the user can apply for a country (or sometimes part of a country) to edit. Users are expected to keep their parts of the map realistic (ie, earthlike, set in the present day and no Science fiction or fantasy elements) and not copy anything from OpenStreetMap (as that would be copyright infringement). They also have a wiki but officially, the staff prefers that users concentrate on the map and use the wiki to describe things on the map (and certain things impossible to put on the map like national flags) and for collaboration. The site also has a "user diary" section which is basically a shared blog.
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Snapchat's June 2017 update introduced its Snap Map with data from Mapbox, OpenStreetMap, and DigitalGlobe.
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Strava switched to OpenStreetMap rendered and hosted by Mapbox from Google Maps in July 2015.
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Tableau has integrated OSM for all their mapping needs. It has been integrated in all of their products.
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TCDD Taşımacılık uses OpenStreetMap as a location map on passenger seats on YHTs. Tesla Smart Summon feature released widely in US in October 2019 uses OSM data to navigate vehicles in private parking areas autonomously (without a safety driver)
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Wahoo uses OpenStreetMap for mapping and giving turn-by-turn navigation in their ELEMNT cycling computers.
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Webots uses OpenStreetMap data to create virtual environment for autonomous vehicle simulations.
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Wikimedia projects uses OpenStreetMap as a locator map for cities and travel points of interest.
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Wikipedia uses OpenStreetMap data to render custom maps used by the articles. Many languages are included in the WIWOSM project (Wikipedia Where in OSM) which aims to show OSM objects on a slippy map, directly visible on the article page.
Source 2
This list is incomplete
Apple Maps - Apples map service. Used by Apple, DuckDuckGo, and others
This list is incomplete
Google Maps/Streetview has had problems in the past for wasting police resources and putting innocent people in jail. Some notable incidents include an incident in 2012 where {(0)} someone faked a murder in front of the Google Maps car and had {(1)} lie down in the street while {(0)} holding a pickaxe handle. Somebody reported it in 2014, which wasted lots of good police officer work time. A good police officers time should not be wasted, as the time they waste dealing with something like this could go towards preventing an actual murder by finding a murderer before he kills again. (by the way, if you want to waste someones time, you should waste the time of a tech support scammer, every minute of their time you waste is another minute where an elderly or inexperienced computer user doesn't get scammed out of hundreds or thousands of dollars. If you are interested in seeing this in action, you can go to a video site and watch a creator posting videos of wasting a tech support scammers time and infecting their computers with malware and ransomware)
Another incident was in 2020 {Source needed} where {(2)} was falsely imprisoned, as they were spotted walking near a crime scene shown on Google Streetview. They were not the criminal, but they were falsely arrested. The US police system isn't modern when it comes to modern technology, he could have stayed out of jail if the police did a proper investigation and did things like check location data and other evidence.
The Google Graveyard (killedbygoogle.com) - a sorted list of the 224+ products Google has killed
Alphabet worker union - The new workers union at Google with over 800 members
Don't want to part with the dinosaur easter egg? This website has you covered
There are other alternates, just search for them.
Some fact checking is needed for this article. This article was rushed, and more info needs to be added.
File type: Markdown (*.md)
File version: 1 (Monday, February 22nd 2021 at 8:53 pm)
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All of my works are free from restrictions. DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) is not present in any of my works. This project does not contain any DRM
This sticker is supported by the Free Software Foundation. I never intend to include DRM in my works.
Version 1 (Monday, February 22nd 2021 at 8:53 pm)
Changes:
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- Added the title section
- Referenced 2 images
- Added a section about privacy
- Added a section about the overview
- Added the article info section
- Referenced the DRM Free icon
- Added the file history section
- Added the alternative solutions section
- Added the privacy focused subsection
- Added the other subsection
- Added the Contributions to false imprisonments section
- Added the Bad file policies section
- Added the other things to check out section
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Version 2 (Coming soon)
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