> It gives hope that Google/ESRI won't always be the dominant mapping platform
Are they? I get the impression that only consumer-facing stuff is Google, to give people a familiar color scheme¹ as well as allow terribly formatted search queries to still work (if google can do one thing it's search). However, anything using geo data in a back-end fashion seems about evenly split between government base maps, OpenStreetMap, and a collection of misc providers that Google is one of
¹ conversely, I struggle to find my home town on Google Maps. It's all about vague, washed-out shapes, besides the bright shop icons and, nowadays, advertising pins. It's a matter of what you're used to so I can very much understand that the average consumer, who's less familiar with maps than me, is totally lost when getting Carto as a map
Are they? I get the impression that only consumer-facing stuff is Google, to give people a familiar color scheme¹ as well as allow terribly formatted search queries to still work (if google can do one thing it's search). However, anything using geo data in a back-end fashion seems about evenly split between government base maps, OpenStreetMap, and a collection of misc providers that Google is one of
¹ conversely, I struggle to find my home town on Google Maps. It's all about vague, washed-out shapes, besides the bright shop icons and, nowadays, advertising pins. It's a matter of what you're used to so I can very much understand that the average consumer, who's less familiar with maps than me, is totally lost when getting Carto as a map