Google, where’s our street maps?

I’ve study some good products here. Certainly worth social bookmarking regarding returning to.

whom of you is willing to bring GPS to philippines? i need free manpower. Its just for the country? anybody interested please contact me and lets do it. i am 30% done..

(OK, it’s a late reply, I know.)

Guys, Google does NOT build its own maps. They buy them – if you look at the European ones, you’ll see Tele Atlas all over; on American ones, you’ll see NAVTEQ.

Incidentally, my company was doing some development related to the field, and I can tell, that you have a handful of very good geographic data providers.

If you are looking for those on the web, you should go here:
http://www.mapcentral.ph

Excellent maps. Plus there are these guys:
http://www.perspective-gis.com/GISMaps.htm (you can get GPS maps here, too)
and these:
http://www.ants.ph

So why no Google Map support then?

I personally talked to some of these providers, and they said that it just doesn’t pay to sell their maps to Google. According to them, Google is just plain stingy when it comes to countries not in their focus, and they are offered ridiculously low royalties for their data which they built with sweat and tears.

And you guys are not the only ones:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverage_details_of_Google_Maps

Malaysia, Viet Nam, South Africa, many European countries are not covered too (I’m not counting those with highways only, it’s not exactly helping).

Why wait for Google to give us tools to start mapping our streets? We can do it ourselves. (Of course, Google can just take the easy way out and license some local GIS company’s data.) :)

i tried zooming in our province but image not available :(

The truth about mapping our roads is discussed in my post – citing Yuga’s post and Eugene’s reply. Just click on my name. Thanks

I posted a reply for Yuga and Eugene ;-) Visit my link.

This post reminds me that I need to do a feature post about OpenStreetMap. It’s a UK-originated community mapping project that primarily depends on user-uploaded GPS tracks to create a CC-licensed street map data. They started with the UK and have now rolled it internationally.

The Philippine coverage is expectedly a bit scanty, but most of the major streets of Metro Manila is now covered. So those lucky people with N95’s, go out and contribute!

I think it will be a while before Google sends a kit to the Philippines. Aside from out very unruly and narrow streets and roads, we have a habit of changing street names very often.