Google Maps may silently be Alphabet's most powerful property. As someone who has spent the last 8 months religiously degoogling my life, I've found that Google Maps features are incredibly hard to replace, while at the same time, giving Google direct abilities to influence behavior in the physical world. People see it as "just a map", but it's so much more. OSM-based map tools are pretty good as maps, but they utterly fail at being real-world information directories and functional tools for coordinating physical activities.
I do have hope. It seems that there has been a lot of new enthusiasm for these tools lately, and some of them have key features in development.
Two low hanging fruits: 1) location bookmarking features that can be synced between mobile/desktop with third party sync tools. 2) Link conversion features that can take Google Maps (or other map links) as input and open the location in OSM tools, and vice-versa.
The real-world information directory is a much bigger challenge, but if the low hanging fruit features are developed enough that the average person could easily use open source / OSM tools for everything except a modern phone book, while still coordinating with peers who use Google Maps, then we'd have a much better foundation for tackling the issue.
I do have hope. It seems that there has been a lot of new enthusiasm for these tools lately, and some of them have key features in development.
Two low hanging fruits: 1) location bookmarking features that can be synced between mobile/desktop with third party sync tools. 2) Link conversion features that can take Google Maps (or other map links) as input and open the location in OSM tools, and vice-versa.
The real-world information directory is a much bigger challenge, but if the low hanging fruit features are developed enough that the average person could easily use open source / OSM tools for everything except a modern phone book, while still coordinating with peers who use Google Maps, then we'd have a much better foundation for tackling the issue.