Why people don't wanna switch from Gmaps (maybe at best a client app):

  • Gmaps has a monopoly on the navigation industry because of one thing: Bussness hours and reviews. It has been that way for years, and the only real alternative for this is Vela Maps, which is vibe-coded (or AI-made), until now

Competition arrives

  • A new project, called "Mangrove Reviews", has been quietly growing on the scenes and has been doing revoews for the FOSS industry, giving Google Maps SOME sort of competition, even if it's not to the level of straight rivalry
  • This service, tho, isn't enough to turn the tides. However, navigation services like MapComplete and CoMaps have been slowly working with them to finally bring convenience for navigation for the more newer or unfamiliar de-googlers

Is this real competition yet?

  • We can't know for sure. As stated in the latest CoMaps article (as of Oct 30th 2026), this is very niche. Competition for certain monoloplies have varying levels of success. Godot has succeeded on rivaling other game engines like Unreal or Unity, while attempts at YouTube altermatives like PeerTube only moderately succeeded. Mangrove Reviews, as far as I can tell, seems to be a very new project, so we can't know for sure. We just gptta hope they succeed

Links and sources:

Info source:

CoMaps download:

MapComplete:

Mangrove:

all 34 comments

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[–] 1 point 2 hours ago (1 child)

i don't think business hours and reviews are the main google maps has a monopoly. as someone who occasionally uses both google maps and openstreetmap, the main reason i use google maps is because it's just more reliable - some points of interest aren't on openstreetmap, and its search doesn't work consistently. i rarely actually use google maps for business hours, and never reviews.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 hours ago

    I use "Here We Go", at least as a navigation system for my car. It is backed by european cat companies, so it has all the traffic data, sometimes even better then google.

    I am aware that its not perfect, since it is also controlled by companies and not open source, but it works very well and at least its not google.

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  • [–] 10 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (11 children)

    Vela Maps is the best way to get accurate information about traffic and opening hours while interacting with Google only as little as you have to

    It's like NewPipe but for GMaps

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  • [–] 11 points 6 hours ago* (6 children)

    you mean Vela Maps? I can't find Vera Maps anywhere.

    If you meant Vela, it's a month old, and it's CLAUDE.md file contains instructions to obscure how LLMs were actually used in the generation of the code for the project. I'll pass.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 hours ago (5 children)

    yes Vela Maps, typo

    it works great and I use it whenever OSMAnd isn't enough or just simply unsuitable (finding restaurants e.g.).

    It's up to you if you'd rather use GMaps directly or just pass on important information like that OFC

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  • [–] 1 point 5 hours ago (4 children)

    ...or just live without live traffic information and get the other info from business websites

    traffic info is a nice-to-have, sure, but I've used just OSMand+ for years and it's never really been an issue.

    adresilo is a good way to get access to Google place data anonymously, if you feel like you need it. I used it a lot at first when it was a novelty, and now I use it about ~10 times per year.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 child)

    You can anonymously get Google place data free (unlike your suggestion) by opening maps in a browser like Firefox Focus that forgets everything each time you exit it. You can also use one of a few apps on F-Droid like GMaps WV that use an isolated webview to do similarly (although you should be aware this is less secure than Firefox Focus because WebRTC can't be blocked this way & the app's cache must be manually cleared).

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  • [–] 1 point 4 hours ago

    Sorry, but traffic info is an absolute must-have if you drive for a living. Even if you don't, getting stuck in traffic jams is a waste of fuel/energy, time, & sanity. It also is dependent upon where you are as some areas are better engineered for traffic issues than others (the older the major city, the worse it tends to be - it's particularly bad in the northeastern US).

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  • [–] 1 point 4 hours ago (1 child)

    I assume this is different to newpipe in an important way though. Newpipe is one-way, you just download video files through it. But in this case you effectively need to send your location to someone or its not gonna be able to supply you with information about traffic close to you.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

    I’m really happy with Organic Maps and not ready to switch unless something really better gets created, but I’d love something like this to be integrated in it.

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  • [–] 9 points 9 hours ago (8 children)

    Post sounds either like an ad piece, the bullet points of a sales pitch, or a LLM summary.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 9 hours ago (6 children)

    Besides, I left out some minor typos, which none of the things you listed should happen in this case

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  • [–] -5 points 8 hours ago (5 children)

    don't listen to them -- the anti-ai hysteria is everywhere.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

    If you're not against something that destroys the environment, drives up energy prices and steals from artists and scientists you're a bit of a twat.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 hours ago* (1 child)

    You're not wrong, and I think that calling it a hysteria is bad, but there's is a degree where people hate LLMs the tool, instead of the actual, real capitalist companies that took the actual actions of stealing, building the data centres that fuck communities over, and aiding the literal fascist takeover.

    And in this specific case, for this specific post, I feel that it's paranoia, conflating bullet points, titles, and generally competent markdown usage, with LLM usage. Nothing in the actual content of this post is disagreeable in my opinion, knowing CoMaps and having heard the new review platform too.

    I think even if LLMs were used in this post (which I think they weren't, but hey), I wouldn't complain, because the content is not slop.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 hours ago (1 child)

    Oooh i gotta get on this, time to review all my favorite local spots 👌

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  • [–] 1 point 6 hours ago (2 children)

    Why comaps? If its pretty much exactly like OSM, why not just work with OSM?

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 9 hours ago (1 child)

    Sorry if I lead to some misinformation. Correct me if you can

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