Not totally related to your point, but it seems to me that Google doesn't care about the quality of Google Maps as much as Apple cares about the quality of Apple Maps.
For example, my house had its address changed by our county in late November when a new street was cut nearby and the location of our driveway changed due to right of way. Our address was updated in the USPS AMS database back in January. As you can imagine, I wanted Map providers to have my most updated information as soon as possible so that people could easily find my address when I gave it to them and so when UPS or Fedex people look up my address on their phones, they can find it.
In Google Maps, I've attempted to contribute an edit several times: each time with links to county tax data, county records, county maps, city maps, and a personal statement explaining the situation. Every time Google rejects it without action or any message other than "not applied". I'm pretty sure there is someone manually reviewing these requests as it always takes a variable amount of time before I get the rejection. It's really disappointing to put so much effort into editing someone else's data - for free - and have it be rejected outright without any sort of explanation.
Now, I went and I did the exact same thing with Apple Maps! My edit was applied within a week and the Map is updated - iPhone users can easily find my house. It seems to me that while maybe Apple spent several years playing catch up with Google, at this point they are hungry to do well by their customers and are extremely responsive to quality concerns. I've not personally had a problem with Apple Maps in several years and don't see myself leaving Apple's platform any time soon
Also a pain-point -- 2.6 million people live in Queens, NY, but Google Maps gets the city wrong for the vast majority of them, and it causes major headaches for residents (since so many services rely on Google Maps), and they have yet to fix it, and reject any edits that attempt to do so for them.
Picking a random example -- "1880 Willoughby" is in the neighborhood of Ridgewood in Queens. Either "Queens" or "Ridgewood" are acceptable as the city.
However, Google Maps calls it "Flushing", which is a totally different neighborhood 10 miles away. Apparently this has to do with the history of where the central post offices were located for given areas in Queens, but no other online map provider struggles with this distinction.
Queens isn’t a city, it’s a borough/county that used to be a bunch of little towns. It’s like asking for directions in Boston using Suffolk, MA.
Queens was like Long Island of the 1950s... the house I grew up in had been a 250 acre farm, with 50 acres left as late as 1898. There are also plenty of dupe street addresses in Queens, especially if you leave a hyphen out. The reference to “Flushing” is a legacy left over from the pre-zipcode era.
For example, my house had its address changed by our county in late November when a new street was cut nearby and the location of our driveway changed due to right of way. Our address was updated in the USPS AMS database back in January. As you can imagine, I wanted Map providers to have my most updated information as soon as possible so that people could easily find my address when I gave it to them and so when UPS or Fedex people look up my address on their phones, they can find it.
In Google Maps, I've attempted to contribute an edit several times: each time with links to county tax data, county records, county maps, city maps, and a personal statement explaining the situation. Every time Google rejects it without action or any message other than "not applied". I'm pretty sure there is someone manually reviewing these requests as it always takes a variable amount of time before I get the rejection. It's really disappointing to put so much effort into editing someone else's data - for free - and have it be rejected outright without any sort of explanation.
Now, I went and I did the exact same thing with Apple Maps! My edit was applied within a week and the Map is updated - iPhone users can easily find my house. It seems to me that while maybe Apple spent several years playing catch up with Google, at this point they are hungry to do well by their customers and are extremely responsive to quality concerns. I've not personally had a problem with Apple Maps in several years and don't see myself leaving Apple's platform any time soon