I was wondering why there isn’t or if there is, an Open Source (Free, or not) Street View like Google Maps. I like geography as a hobby, like my other hobbies, and found GeoHub which sparked my interest in being a free geoguessr alternative. I just don’t understand why Google is the only Mapping service people go to, is Google the only one that has street view? is this a hard business model to achieve?

Please, I’d love too know :)

  • unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
    1·
    2 months ago

    Gathering street view like data, processing it, running the service and keeping it up to date would require millions if not billions of dollars/euros in capturing equipment, server farms, wages, electricity, lawfirms.

    If you want something thats compareable to the google service, its entirely impossible to do it with a project structure like osm has.

    Even if someone had the funding to get started, they would most likely get bought out by google or apple or microsoft very quickly once they got comparable results.

    • 7EP6vuI@feddit.orgEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      any sane people would same the same about a map covering the whole world, and yet there is openstreetmap.

      yes there are many challenges, but if you start small and grow from there it could work and maybe span a town or two in a couple of years…