Google I/O 2013 - Project Ground Truth: Accurate Maps Via Algorithms and Elbow Grease

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2 HN recommenders · recommended in 2 months, 2013–2022
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A Google I/O 2013 talk on Project Ground Truth, Google's effort to build accurate map data using algorithms and a lot of manual work. It covers how the map data behind Google Maps is made and corrected.

HN people recommend it as the best look at how the data behind Google Maps is actually produced, including the internal tools used to edit it.

“Google Maps' dataset is curated in no small part by a powerful Java-based desktop app called Atlas”
Maps & cartography
#googlemaps#groundtruth#mapdata#googlei/o#mapping

4 comments from Hacker News

e
@efalcao2014 · in “The Huge, Unseen Operation Behind the Accuracy of Google Maps”
There was a great talk on this at Google I/O 2013. Recording here: ▶ this video
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s
@sytelus2013 · in “Project Ground Truth: Accurate Maps Via Algorithms and Elbow Grease”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
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d
@danans2022 · in “The decline and fall of Java on the desktop”
> Could it be the release of Gmail (2004) and Google Maps (2005) showing that you could actually make really great apps written in HTML and JavaScript? For the mass consumer market, these apps definitely demonstrated what was possible with web-technologies. Ironically, Google Maps' dataset is curated in no small part by a powerful Java-based desktop app called Atlas, which was presented at Google I/O 2013: ▶ this video Perhaps today it would be created with web based technologies, but at this point, it's so powerful that it's doubtful it will ever be ported. I suspect there are a lot of powerful internal tools like that across many industries.
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p
@puzzle2018 · in “Apple is rebuilding Maps from the ground up”
Originally, they couldn't license the actual data, either, because at least the road network wasn't Google's to license. It came from TeleAtlas (after Nokia had bought NavTeq), Zenrin for Japan and a few more. Things were tricky like that before the Ground Truth project (▶ this video) covered enough of the planet. When Google launched navigation on Android, it lost money in countries not covered by Ground Truth, which I think was everywhere outside the US. That's because TeleAtlas and co. charged N times as much when the same data was used for real time directions.
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