this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2026
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DeGoogle Yourself

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Google bussness hours and reviews are finally getting SOME sort of competition (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 day ago by OppositeMeaning@lemmy.world to c/degoogle@lemmy.ml
52 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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:

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[–] WhoIzDisIz@lemmy.today 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

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).

[–] qweertz@programming.dev -2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah and Vela Maps does it even better

[–] WhoIzDisIz@lemmy.today 4 points 1 day ago

I've been using it off & on. While it's gotten better, it's still a bit much of a battery-killer, comparatively speaking. It's surprising how decent it is, but that's definitely preventing me from adopting it full time yet.

Also, I find it copying Google too closely. For example, I've never understood why we can't just get directions without all the "alerts" that are over-reported by people just for Internet points. I hate already being a mile into a ten-mile construction zone, and being told there's "construction ahead" repeatedly throughout the rest of the construction. It's just so stupid and incredibly annoying. It'd be really nice to have the ability to select which warnings get spoken, and maybe disable all warnings for a selectable period (like 10 or 20 mins or miles).

There's other stuff, too, but they're far more minor to me. Until the battery sucking issue is resolved, I just can't be bothered. I'm keeping an eye on it, though.