I'll do a shameless advertisement of our open source routing engine GraphHopper as one of our main advantage over the big companies is that we do not track users. We rent our servers (not on AWS or GC :) ) and remove logs after max. 5 weeks https://graphhopper.com/maps/ (see our privacy policy for more details)
We only keep them for debugging purposes and attack prevention. The maps layer (visualization) is done from an external company though: you can change this in the upper right corner to e.g. the original OpenStreetMap or Thunderforest.
Additionally you get nice biking and hiking routes all with elevation, multiple other vehicle types like scooter or truck. And the possibility to export to GPX or using multiple via points. Additionally we try to update the road network as fast as possible (currently max. 1-3 days) from OpenStreetMap data, which is not always the case from other providers. Currently we try to revamp our UI to integrate new features like our alternative routes (you can trigger this via algorithm=alternative_route URL parameter).
Now it is always important to ask the question "how do they make money?" and to understand why we can offer this all for free and even have the routing engine as open source: the simple reason is that we do not have to earn money with the end user. We created the company to push our open source projects (we also have jsprit - a toolkit for solving rich vehicle routing problems) and we try to support OpenStreetMap where we can (e.g. we are the only European corporate gold member of the OSM foundation) and do this via our growing SaaS where we sell subscriptions to many small and medium sized businesses. We do not have VC and so there is no pressure into things we don't want.
I have only two things to say in response to this:
a) I use GraphHopper with OpenStreetMap.org sometimes. It is good. Sometimes too good. Can I ask it to stick to bigger roads at the cost of other things like travel time?
b) Thank you so much for bringing up the profit model and being transparent about it. Way too few people do that.
I work for an IoT company doing vehicle tracking. We wanted to draw a line to show where cars had been. Google's routing algorithm insists on passing every point. GPS errors mean sometimes this resulted in routes going off a motorway, passing an (incorrect) point, and then rejoining the motorway.
Graphhopper's map matching algorithm handled this perfectly, and we're a satisfied, paying, corporate user (since March 2019).
Tech support was also extremely responsive and helpful when I needed to debug some edge cases (e.g. extremely long trips).
My friend Jessie in Germany also uses Graphhopper for visualising research on tram lines, and her experience has also been excellent.
I was not paid to say this, I'm just a satisfied customer. Use Graphhopper.
Is there any plan to add stuff like business addresses and all the other fluff of Google Maps? I'll happily use this for getting around but having to input the street address instead of just the name of a business can be a hassle. Either way, thank you for offering an alternative, this seems great.
Sorry for the trivial question: should I leave house numbers off the start/end points? i.e. this works: <road name>, <zip>, <town name> but this does not: <house number>, <road name>, <zip>, <town name>
The article doesn't say, but if it used an OpenStreetMap-based routing engine (which you can self-host because, y'know, open data) then the directions might misalign to the display layer which is Apple Maps. Therefore it must send your directions request to Apple. Which I guess is fine, they'll just see "some DDG user" requesting certain directions and it's definitely not the worst company they could be working with, I'm just a bit surprised that DDG went with Apple Maps instead of self hosting.
It's the one thing that's kept me off DDG - the superior choice of OSM exists. And as you've pointed out, their choice of maps now forces the user into Apple's hands as the choice of navigation, a company which I do not trust, and I certainly don't see it as the least evil.
Even placing my mistrust aside, it's once again a US-centric move; as garbage as Apple Maps is, it's even worse outside the US.
The only reason for this choice that makes any sense, is that they've received a monetary incentive for this, and neither company has been open about it.
Good, I decided to finally ditch Google Maps as my usual go-to app when I need bus directions, itineraries or things like that. The app is now cluttered with too much suggestions about restaurants, places and suggestions I have no interest about on the moment.
I recently re-installed Here maps (which I loved on windows mobile) and my country railway app has built-in bus data so it can help plan travels as well.
I didn't saw any hints about it in the article but are they going to build an app around it ?
Edit: ah, they don't have public transport schedules yet.
Google is trying to find the saturation point where people start leaving...
My annoyance is that every second trip is... back home. So with their gigawatt AI, I suppose it could have learnt. So I guess it tries to do its best to avoid me going home: typing « Home » suggests « Home Depot? home improvement? Homie restaurant? Homicide drop point? » I’m joking with the last one but Google seems to be pushing too hard to make me discover new places.
After getting thoroughly sick of the full page "pop up" that Google Search and Youtube both now display on just about every visit, I switched to DDG for search and youtube-dl for YT and it's actually been great. DDG results are fine, and the !bang (!g, !w etc) makes it really easy to jump to other search engines / places if I really need it. Google have lost me as a regular customer for good.
I was interested in doing this too. One issue I found, however, was getting a list of my subscriptions without having to go to the website and fetch the channel IDs or video IDs for youtube-dl to then use.
I also noted that youtube-dl can download from your subscriptions list directly, which is cool. I was going to put that on a cronjob and just let it milk my subscriptions on a daily basis as new videos come out.
I've also been using "Clean Up YouTube", a Firefox plugin, which basically eliminates whatever you want from the UI. For me that's the home screen/trending crap, comments and just about everything. Now I only focus on my subscription feed and move on from YouTube after that. This has helped to drastically reduce the amount of crap I watch.
I've had constant issues getting OSMand to navigate to addresses, even after checking that the address exists on OSM. If I search for a POI, it typically has no issue finding it and routing me there, but if I enter a street address, I get nothing. Enabling online search after failing to find an address once used to work perfectly (online search uses Nominatim instead of photon IIRC), but they seem to have removed online search entirely in the last update, so now I can only navigate by POI name or cross-street.
It might be better in other places, but it's a long way from replacing google maps for me.
Indeed, OsmAnd works wonders offline on phones: there's a ton of detail compared to some proprietary services, at least in some cities, and routing works fine without internet connection (with the exception of public transport when the data is not in OSM).
It's not entirely free, namely map updates are limited without a subscription—though I haven't checked if it's the same with the F-Droid version.
Accessing maps and directions through a web search, though? That hasn't made sense for years on mobile. Sad to say, they need an independent DDG Maps app to make this viable on mobile.
Absolutely agree on this. Furthermore, there's zero interactivity with the map other than zoom and pan. Maybe it's just me, but I can't click any labeled point of interest for more information. Nor can I click on a spot to set start or end locations for directions! It's surprising how non-user friendly it is at this stage.
DuckDuckGo seems to be a US-based enterprise (remind me again how that works with being "privacy friendly"?) so it's hardly surprising as cycling seems to be almost non-existing in most cities in the US.
There is less consensus on routing for cycling, no one-size-fits-all solution, because everything depends on stamina, level of comfort cycling with traffic, tire width and wheel durability. On Android, for instance, see how different the routes can be when generated by OSMAnd's in-built cycling router and when generated by the Brouter plugin (which in turn has two profiles users must choose from). No surprise that DDG doesn't want to roll out cycle routing before they can think up a UI that offers the required customizability without daunting the user.
This is cool but doesn't use my most frequent use of Google Maps or Apple Maps: checking to see where traffic accidents are before leaving.
Portland has freeways running north/south (more or less) on the West side (I5) and East side (I205). Sometimes, one of them will be significantly slowed because of accidents or some other unspecified cause.
After being stuck on the freeway once or twice, it's now our habit to check the route for traffic. What's normally the fastest route can be the slowest because of traffic.
I haven't enabled DuckDuckGo to use my location, so when I go to directions, it assumes my location is in a city near me, which I assume is based on my IP address.
What's the benefit of doing this, rather than just leaving it blank?
PS: Product looks really good. Really quick on Firefox, without any dumb animations like Google Maps that make it seem so much slower.
Something I'd really like to see in all map apps is a "scenic" route option. Routes organized by level of traffic, nearness to parks, etc.
I'm usually willing to walk/bike an extra kilometer or so if it means I'll walk through a park instead of next to a highway. Unfortunately the default/only option is always the quickest one.
Awesome and thanks, DDG! No longer need to use Google for all my direction inquiries.
Now if you could please offer a front end email service for iCloud, ProtonMail and or other privacy centric email clients (let the user choose) and a DDG full fledged news service (it could rank news sites which are privacy centric the highest) that would rock; allow me to further separate myself from using Google & support companies who share my values in one interface!
This is nice and I really appreciate the work of DuckDuckgo for privacy, but unfortunately it is not enough for me to switch from Google Maps. First, you cannot select a custom location as a target, it automatically selects a shop from a search result. I could not select my house or the closest station.
Secondly, there are no public transports, so it is unusable in Tokyo.
That said, both bing and ddg tend to give me similarly disappointing results. They just seem focused on the US and searching in any other country in English, or even dare to use another language the result quality and especially recency drops significantly.
I have used DDG for the past five years and I like it as a hedge to keep other search engines honest but this is not in good taste.
If they want a product blog, rather than using something like this as a name, they can simply do what other respectable companies do and use something like
[+] [-] karussell|5 years ago|reply
We only keep them for debugging purposes and attack prevention. The maps layer (visualization) is done from an external company though: you can change this in the upper right corner to e.g. the original OpenStreetMap or Thunderforest.
Additionally you get nice biking and hiking routes all with elevation, multiple other vehicle types like scooter or truck. And the possibility to export to GPX or using multiple via points. Additionally we try to update the road network as fast as possible (currently max. 1-3 days) from OpenStreetMap data, which is not always the case from other providers. Currently we try to revamp our UI to integrate new features like our alternative routes (you can trigger this via algorithm=alternative_route URL parameter).
Now it is always important to ask the question "how do they make money?" and to understand why we can offer this all for free and even have the routing engine as open source: the simple reason is that we do not have to earn money with the end user. We created the company to push our open source projects (we also have jsprit - a toolkit for solving rich vehicle routing problems) and we try to support OpenStreetMap where we can (e.g. we are the only European corporate gold member of the OSM foundation) and do this via our growing SaaS where we sell subscriptions to many small and medium sized businesses. We do not have VC and so there is no pressure into things we don't want.
[+] [-] kqr|5 years ago|reply
a) I use GraphHopper with OpenStreetMap.org sometimes. It is good. Sometimes too good. Can I ask it to stick to bigger roads at the cost of other things like travel time?
b) Thank you so much for bringing up the profit model and being transparent about it. Way too few people do that.
[+] [-] peterburkimsher|5 years ago|reply
Graphhopper's map matching algorithm handled this perfectly, and we're a satisfied, paying, corporate user (since March 2019).
Tech support was also extremely responsive and helpful when I needed to debug some edge cases (e.g. extremely long trips).
My friend Jessie in Germany also uses Graphhopper for visualising research on tram lines, and her experience has also been excellent.
I was not paid to say this, I'm just a satisfied customer. Use Graphhopper.
[+] [-] trevor-e|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WilTimSon|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tvb12|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucb1e|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] politelemon|5 years ago|reply
Even placing my mistrust aside, it's once again a US-centric move; as garbage as Apple Maps is, it's even worse outside the US.
The only reason for this choice that makes any sense, is that they've received a monetary incentive for this, and neither company has been open about it.
[+] [-] rietta|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|5 years ago|reply
https://github.com/valhalla/valhalla
[+] [-] johnchristopher|5 years ago|reply
I recently re-installed Here maps (which I loved on windows mobile) and my country railway app has built-in bus data so it can help plan travels as well.
I didn't saw any hints about it in the article but are they going to build an app around it ?
Edit: ah, they don't have public transport schedules yet.
[+] [-] laurent92|5 years ago|reply
My annoyance is that every second trip is... back home. So with their gigawatt AI, I suppose it could have learnt. So I guess it tries to do its best to avoid me going home: typing « Home » suggests « Home Depot? home improvement? Homie restaurant? Homicide drop point? » I’m joking with the last one but Google seems to be pushing too hard to make me discover new places.
[+] [-] hippo77|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Liquix|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rwmj|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] movedx|5 years ago|reply
I was interested in doing this too. One issue I found, however, was getting a list of my subscriptions without having to go to the website and fetch the channel IDs or video IDs for youtube-dl to then use.
I also noted that youtube-dl can download from your subscriptions list directly, which is cool. I was going to put that on a cronjob and just let it milk my subscriptions on a daily basis as new videos come out.
I've also been using "Clean Up YouTube", a Firefox plugin, which basically eliminates whatever you want from the UI. For me that's the home screen/trending crap, comments and just about everything. Now I only focus on my subscription feed and move on from YouTube after that. This has helped to drastically reduce the amount of crap I watch.
[+] [-] lumberjack|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fuzxi|5 years ago|reply
It might be better in other places, but it's a long way from replacing google maps for me.
[+] [-] aasasd|5 years ago|reply
It's not entirely free, namely map updates are limited without a subscription—though I haven't checked if it's the same with the F-Droid version.
[+] [-] im3w1l|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cacois|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goodsignal|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] severine|5 years ago|reply
- More than two points. It seems to be only start to end now.
- Option to change the route manually.
- Option to avoid toll roads.
Great news, go DDG!
[+] [-] nemoniac|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diggan|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mediterraneo10|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdeibele|5 years ago|reply
Portland has freeways running north/south (more or less) on the West side (I5) and East side (I205). Sometimes, one of them will be significantly slowed because of accidents or some other unspecified cause.
After being stuck on the freeway once or twice, it's now our habit to check the route for traffic. What's normally the fastest route can be the slowest because of traffic.
[+] [-] radicalriddler|5 years ago|reply
What's the benefit of doing this, rather than just leaving it blank?
PS: Product looks really good. Really quick on Firefox, without any dumb animations like Google Maps that make it seem so much slower.
[+] [-] keiferski|5 years ago|reply
I'm usually willing to walk/bike an extra kilometer or so if it means I'll walk through a park instead of next to a highway. Unfortunately the default/only option is always the quickest one.
[+] [-] a3n|5 years ago|reply
Not familiar with the ddg maps features. Got a map and directions to where I'm going. Apple logo on the map. Fine.
Clicking and zooming on the map, and suddenly I noticed I'm on a Google map with a Google url.
I'll have to go slower when I have the time, and figure out if it's worth using.
[+] [-] paul7986|5 years ago|reply
Now if you could please offer a front end email service for iCloud, ProtonMail and or other privacy centric email clients (let the user choose) and a DDG full fledged news service (it could rank news sites which are privacy centric the highest) that would rock; allow me to further separate myself from using Google & support companies who share my values in one interface!
[+] [-] rhn_mk1|5 years ago|reply
Sure, it's less un-private than using the data vacuum that is Google, but it's still sharing pieces of your life with a random org.
[+] [-] qrbLPHiKpiux|5 years ago|reply
A lot of people still don’t realize this, or just don’t care.
[+] [-] Seb-C|5 years ago|reply
Secondly, there are no public transports, so it is unusable in Tokyo.
[+] [-] jhoechtl|5 years ago|reply
It is so damn overdue to have a truly independent search engine which ranks results not based on marketing companies and paid results.
[+] [-] nelaboras|5 years ago|reply
That said, both bing and ddg tend to give me similarly disappointing results. They just seem focused on the US and searching in any other country in English, or even dare to use another language the result quality and especially recency drops significantly.
[+] [-] sergiotapia|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kayson|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kliment|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amelius|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] x32n23nr|5 years ago|reply
[0] https://www.0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-11/the-pivot-that-excited-...
[+] [-] 2OEH8eoCRo0|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] srtjstjsj|5 years ago|reply
It's fine to market DDG as privacy respecting, but making an astroturf "privacy advice" org is disgusting.
[+] [-] actuator|5 years ago|reply
If they want a product blog, rather than using something like this as a name, they can simply do what other respectable companies do and use something like
- duckduckgoblog.com
- duckduckgo.com/blog/
- blog.duckduckgo.com
[+] [-] nojs|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] soraminazuki|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nelaboras|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the-dude|5 years ago|reply
Why?
[+] [-] Igelau|5 years ago|reply