Google Map Maker
Google Map Maker became available for the United States this week. Formerly Google Map Maker was available for many other countries but not the United States.
Google Map Maker makes Google Maps more like a wiki, in the style of OpenStreetMap. This makes it possible for users to edit places, hours, roads, and buildings. It’s even possible to add bike lanes.
There is an approval process for changes, which considers input from other users.
This development will be useful for transit agencies that wish to fine-tune user experience for Google Transit by making local landmark and road information more accurate.
More information is available in a post on the Official Google Blog.
Except that with open street map, the data is freely available after. Google data is closed.
Why would you volunteer to help Google generate more money, rather than support an open community project?
The way I think of it, contributing edits to OpenStreetMap and to Google Maps result in different returns for the user.
With OpenStreetMap, the complete underlying dataset is available for download and use in software and GIS projects.
With Google Map Maker, the data is available in more limited forms — through the cartography at maps.google.com and through the Google Maps API. Edits contributed with Google Map Maker become available to many users, including the users of the transit trip planner. Currently, transit trip planning is not available on a broad scale with OpenStreetMap.