Wikipedia Drops Google Maps In Favor Of OpenStreetMap For Use In Its Mobile Apps

(4:23 pm PDT, Apr 5th 2012)

Wikipedia Drops Google Maps In Favor Of OpenStreetMap For Use In Its Mobile Apps
You can add another name to the list of companies dropping Google Maps in favor of OpenStreetMap. When Wikipedia announced its new app for iOS today, they also announced that they would be using OpenStreetMap exclusively for the nearby view in both their iOS and Android mobile apps. Wikipedia feels this change will be a better fit for their goal of making knowledge available in a free and open manner to everyone.

This also means we no longer have to use proprietary Google APIs in our code, which helps it run on the millions of cheap Android handsets that are purely open source and do not have the proprietary Google applications.

Apple and Foursquare are a couple of other companies who have recently ditched Google Maps. It appears Google’s recent plan to charge high-volume users for access to its Maps APIs has led many to jump ship in favor of OpenStreetMap — which provides an open and free source of Map Data.

Since users are afforded the privilege of using these services for free anyways, it makes good business sense for companies to go with whichever service saves them money. What do you guys think, would you be upset if Google Maps started slowly disappearing off the, well… map?

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Comment »

  • lrd555

    Mmm… do I sense yet more Android fragmentation here? A double blow to Google?
    Steve Jobs must be smiling up in heaven.

    • Craig Rathbone

      Yet another iTard in our midst.

      This has NOTHING to do with Android other than the fact the app is available on it.

      This a GMaps API thing and applies to mobile and web content when accessed by a third party such as Wikipedia.

  • MrBambinoDent

    No I’d be happy to see google disappear from my life. Except for their search engine lol

    • tincho81

      Try Bing, it’s a pretty good search engine. I use it all the time.

    • MrBambinoDent

      Thanks for the advice. I’ll give it a try.

  • AlanLiddell

    This makes more sense for Wikipedia, and, indeed, for the app ecosystem – at least on iOS. Maybe even Android. Charging for the API doesn’t seem to be a smart move if you want people to use it – a bad move all around, if Maps is going to be baked in to Android.

    At any rate, I don’t think Maps is going away in the browser, not while Google is king of search.

  • sir1jaguar

    Hahahaha…

    Even on the 5% quality of google maps – open street maps is nothing…

    To those imorons keep on saying that they want google out of their life, DO YOU KNOW THAT GOOGLE is EMBEDDED in almost all tablets, personal computers (laptops, desktops), smartphones even mp3 and many more…

    They have literally thousands of products you dont know that they own it.

    If all their products from the smallest one to those popular ones will not be in your gadgets, its like you are driving a car with no wheels…

About the author

Vincent MessinaVincent Messina has been writing and evangelizing about Android for the past three years. When he's not playing the part of "Loki" to his 5 and 4-year-old, he can be found here, covering all things Android. He adamantly believes Android has the greatest community around and can be harassed at any of the following locations: Google+, Twitter.

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