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You can always find anecdotal areas where each do a better job (e.g. Rangali Island, Maldives http://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=rangali%20island#m... https://www.google.com/maps/search/Conrad+Maldives+Rangali+I...) Or compare Northstar Ski Resort (https://www.google.com/maps/place/Northstar+California+Resor...) (http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/2635559519#map=15/39.2599/...) Sure, they have dotted lines for the trails, but they're missing names and color coding for difficulty.

The real issue is geocoding and business listings. That's the primary user interface to getting your mapping endpoints for most people, and frankly, Google Maps is far and above most other services in this regard. Street View is indispensable for many tasks. I often use it to get a visual cue of the place I'm looking for, especially if it's a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, or to map out where I'm going to park if it's in a city.



Actually OSM does gather data about ski trails. They're just not displayed on default renderer.

See: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Piste_Maps

And something from the area you posted: http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/216074683



That's awesome - I normally wear glasses and I wear contacts to ski and I'm now getting to an age where reading ski maps with my contacts in is getting to be a problem.

It has the huge ski areas in the Alps - I noticed the new "Vertical Experience" run at Meribel in the 3V which I'll need to add to the To Do list.


I don't think it is missing that many business listings, after all foursquare is for example using OSM.

What it lacks is a service that extracts the data, makes it searchable and has ratings etc.


In much of the U.S. there basically aren't any businesses mapped at all.


Yeah, there's a big U.S./European difference here. In many European cities, OSM has better business listings than Google. OSM is especially better about not continuing to list restaurants that closed 3 years ago, as Google likes to do. But in the U.S., Google is much better.

The UK is maybe the best case for OSM, unsurprisingly since it started there and has the most concentrated community there. There is barely any stone unmapped in the country, and stones that move get updated within days. France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland are also very well covered.




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