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:

  • evin@lemmy.ml
    8·
    8 days ago

    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.

  • qweertz@programming.dev
    41·
    8 days ago

    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

    • Unusable 3151 ⁂@lemmy.ml
      10·
      8 days ago

      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.

      • qweertz@programming.dev
        12·
        8 days ago

        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

        • Unusable 3151 ⁂@lemmy.ml
          3·
          8 days ago

          …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.