Anyone have a handle on the pros and cons of Mapquest over Google Maps? Trying to slowly (very slowly) plan a de-Google someday.

Sorry if this becomes spammy, but as a reasonably long-time user of and contributor to OpenStreetMap (whose data MapQuest uses), when I see threads like these, I try to offer support to anyone who's interested in/already using/contributing to OpenStreetMap.

If you have any questions whatsoever about things like getting started, how to survey efficiently, what kinds of details you can map, problems you've been having, etc., even if you think they're really dumb, please feel free to ask. At worst, I can try pointing you to a relevant article on the official wiki, and at best, maybe we'll both learn something.

I wouldn't be asking if I didn't believe every single well-meaning contribution is valuable and that yours would be no different.

Mapquest is owned and operated by System1:

System1, Inc. is an American digital advertising and customer acquisition company. Formerly known as OpenMail, it was founded in 2013. It describes itself as operating a "Responsive Acquisition Marketing Platform", and cites privacy as one of its principal foci, although it has been criticized for its influence on privacy-focused properties, including search engine Startpage.com.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System1

So, you're still fundamentally dealing with an ad company, which is not great. They do seem to have some intention to maintain end-user privacy, but how extensive is it and how long will it last? Don't know.

On the other hand, Google has completely abandoned any pretense of not scraping its users' information for everything they can squeeze out of it, and dumping it all into Gemini. System1 doesn't currently have any major AI development projects.

Never mind, they definitely have some kind of AI development going on:

System1 is an Industry-leading omnichannel digital marketing platform, powered by Machine Learning and AI, that monetizes internet traffic by putting the right ads in front of the right people at the right time.

https://system1.com/what-we-do

This probably has something to do with using AI to match data about people with ad placement, though the website is not specific.

That sucks. But there are other OSM-based services, even FOSS ones. I wish they had as rich data as Google, but it takes effort and people to actually use them and contribute.