I am wondering what other guides think about the entire system Google has set up here. Guides from all over the world provide google maps with free content in the form of videos, photos, reviews and updates. As many of your know content is king. Content is what the entire internet economy is built upon. With Google Maps the local guides spend their time and energy providing free content. In return Google chooses around 50 people out of millions of contributors to be the years “Guiding Stars” I do realize that at certain levels Google might offer a perk such as a tee shirt, a pair of sock or a discount on a google product. But really now is that fair. Google is one of the richest companies in the internet world and it has figured out a way to get almost free content for its Google Maps platform and gives back the internet equivalent of almost nothing in return to its contributors. I am not saying what the solution might be but I wonder what other contributors think about how the system is set up and whether others feel that a more meaningful system of benefits or perks should be instituted in the future?
hello @DariusNefarious , first of all, you are welcome. the shares you make help all people in the world. But every job done without expecting anything in return is better. There is no reward system here. But sometimes some rewards can be sent to random people by google.I think helping people is much more important than getting rewards, a person’s happiness for their reward makes me more happy, just doing something for the award would bother me
I do agree with this. It’s a great way to capture data for free using gamification system. Basically, google gives us a sense of achievement by giving us stars, levels, other tags, which really doesn’t cost them a dime. In turn, they give it free to their users, but this is their way of monetising by getting more people on their platform by portraying, “we have very big data, use our platform, and then be targeted by ads”. Also, at the same time, they charge organisations for using these services in form of APIs. So yes, they make tons of money with the data provided by local guides, at the same time not rewarding us enough for the same.
Doing it free for a platform which doesn’t monetise the contents shared by us is okay. Like contributing to wikipedia for free makes sense as they do not advertise/target customers and make money, they’re true democracy “for the people, by the people”, while google makes money of the content shared by us. They do give us a sense of contribution for a greater good, but it’s actually not.
Hallo, @DariusNefarious “Welcome to Connect! If this is your first visit, you’ve come to the right place. This post will serve as a guide for everything you need to know about contributing content and engaging with the Local Guides community on Connect” . This is the first of the information that you will find in “Your guide to Connect” , the introductory Guide of the community. In there you will find all the necessary information to know how to better contribute in here.
In the past I paid €100 a year to update my sat nav (2 updates a year) but now I have a free and always up to date navigation system. If I want to go somewhere I read the reviews first and look at the pictures posted by local guides like me. If I need some information, I look for it using the Google search engine. I manage my e-mail, use spreadsheets and a text editor, prepare my presentations, archive my images, and for the last 6 years I have spent nothing on all of this. I personally value this, and I know I saved at least a thousand Euros compared to what I used to pay for, plus the fact that I now have better functionality.
In any case, just a few days ago, I tried to give a real, or at least realistic, dimension to the possibility of being paid for our contributions. I tried to replace words like “a lot” with numbers so that what we say has a more understandable meaning than bar talk.
So, if you like, I’d be happy to have your comment considering the implications of this as well, @DariusNefarious , @thekosmix : G€t Paid for Our Contribution$? What could happen if that were the case?
Do you have a doubt about how to do something? The Help desk is here for you,with a long list of post with detailed indications on how to post.
Which kind of contents we share in the community? What are Connect topics? will give you an explanation
It is clear from this link that Google makes BILLIONS of dollars each year off of Google Maps
https://www.kamilfranek.com/how-google-maps-makes-money/
How many billions is the question but clearly we are talking huge amounts of revenue.
So Local Guides and contributors are providing Google’s money making maps machine with free content and in exchange the contributors are provided with the equivalent of nothing. While this is an amazing outcome for google it is an absurd outcome for the contributors who spend their time as unpaid minions for the google money making machine. The fact that so few contributors understand what is happening seems even more absurd. Google is not like Wikipedia which is a non profit. Google is a for profit company which had revenue in 2022 of about 282 BILLION USD. So let’s face the facts people. The more time we spend contributing to Google Maps the more revenue we are generating for Google. The fact the google has been so successful at creating an army of unpaid contributors to empower Google Maps shows how clever they are and how gullible and naive their contributors must be…
The income of a company, @DariusNefarious , should be compared with the expenses, to see what the profits were.
So you should kindly list the expenses as well:
- Wages
- Food for employees and visitors
- Energy costs,
- Costs for structures
- Travel costs
- Costs for development and research.
- Costs for the acquisition of satellite images
- Costs for acquiring other data from third parties
- Taxes
- Overhead costs
This would give you the size of the earnings. At this point you should indicate how much of these profits are reinvested.
What’s left should give you an indicative size of what gets split among the shareholders. it is in fact from this side that you should take what you would like to distribute among the local guides.
Now you should define how (with what criterion, views, points, or whatever) this figure should be divided among the 150 million Local Guides. This would allow you to calculate how much you could earn. Please share that number
The rest, as I said already, is just bar talk
Regarding Wikipedia, even if the two things are not comparable, I usually contribute with a donation, because I value what they do. Do you do the same?
Thank you Ermes T for your considered reply and taking this issue seriously.
I totally agree that one should consider all expenses as well as income and then look what were the remaining profits.
In the 12 months ending Sept 30, 2022 Google’s parent Alphabet Gross Profit was $158.264B, a 17.08% increase year-over-year.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/gross-profit
They do not break out profit per business unit but it is hard to imagine that Google Maps which sells both ads and API’s would not have earned some of those 158 billion in profit
Your list of expenses for Google Maps is a good one. In another reality, I would imagine the contributions by Local Guides would be part of the “Costs for acquiring other data from third parties”
I am not proposing that all 150 million Local Guides be paid. However when you look at the Local Guides that become Levels 7 to 10 I imagine you would be looking at a much lower number and I think it would be appropriate to have a meaningful discussion as the how the most active and valuable contributors might be meaningfully compensated.
Imagine if you will a level 8 Local Guide with 25 million views which is comprised of reviews, photos, videos and map updates. If an employee of Google Maps came up with a widget that created 25 millions views I imagine they would be compensated for making that amazing widget. In short they would be paid for making Google Maps more valuable for its advertisers and API customers. High Level Local Guides p are doing exactly what an employee might do but we are doing it for free. So this is not simply bar talk. This is a real issue that has not been adequately discussed as far as I am aware. It is high time that high level Local Guides have their say on this issue. What do you think?
Note I do enjoy and value what Wikipedia does and I donate to them on a yearly basis!!
Hi @DariusNefarious (and @ErmesT )
The simple answer to the question posed is - YES.
The reality is somewhat more complicated, but boils down to this. I would strongly suggest that every Local Guide about level 7 is addicted to regularly adding photos/videos and reviews to Google Maps. We all get a kick out of posting, then quickly seeing the results as the views creep up. I’d bet virtually every one of you check your Totals on at least a daily basis.
I don’t think my own motivations are any different to any other level 7 and above. I added some photos a few days ago and that little adrenaline rush at seeing at least two of those photos going up at the rate of about 3,000 per day feeds the addiction. I’ve been in a minor depression for the last three days as my Photo Totals has remained static (happens all the time, as most of us are aware). Woke up this morning to see that the figure has just sped passed 400 Million - another adrenaline spike. 
Will Google reward me - probably receive some half hearted notification in about a weeks or so.
Google are fully aware of our collective addiction, and therefore have no real interest in a ‘Reward/Results’ system.
If they were, it would be fairly easy to reward those who attain Level 10 with freebies, such as Free access to Paid Movies. I’ve just upped my Google One subscription (£7.99 per month) to give me more space - space which is ironically being taken up by all the photos I take.
@DariusNefarious , “This is a real issue that has not been adequately discussed as far as I am aware”. This is exactly the reason why a few weeks ago I wanted to start this post G€t Paid for Our Contribution$? What could happen if that were the case?
Even if I think that there are a lot more “variable” do discuss about being paid, and I always shared my personal opinion, on the meantime I think that we should talk about that.
And always, every time we talk about this subject,in and in Number of views of our photos. Why? Probably because this is measurable, @GYours , but …
How are views comparable? Just according to the numbers? One million, Hundred Millions, One billion? Or is better to consider the Average. 40 thousands in your case, if I read correctly your post of October 2022. Well, I live in a rural village near a city of 80,000, and I like to update small businesses and touristic information in a village of 1000 in the Venetian Pre-Alps. Sometimes I am happy to get 3,000 views of a photo, hundred views of a review, because it means that at least 3000 people reached the listing of that small farm. Is that photo worth more or less than one of the photos with hundreds of thousands of views of a high-end fashion store on Venice’s main fashion street? That photo of me in the high fashion store, or in the famous restaurant, how much affects the global recognition of that activity. And how much does my photo with a few thousand views affect the recognition, and the possibility of improving its earnings, of that small farm in the Pre-Alps?
And what about the other contributions? For example, I like to add roads, especially in remote locations where hardly anyone contributes. I’ve added thousands of miles of roads in Maps, allowing remote places to be reached by setting up navigation in Maps. I added entire villages, in areas where local businesses sometimes serve a few hundred local users, because for Maps the village didn’t exist. How do we measure this? For some people this has probably been life changing, but is it worth more or less than a few million views of a Big City Fast Food?.
Well, personally I’m against being rewarded financially, or with gifts, but as I explained in my post I think that many variables need to be taken into consideration and evaluated when it comes to money.
However, I am happy with this conversation, because finally someone who wants to talk about compensation contributes in a more than appropriate way, with high quality contributions. When someone talks about fees I’m used to checking the profile in Maps, and in most of the posts a huge sadness catches me, because whoever posts is just uploading spam in Maps.
So I wonder: if one day we were paid, how much would spam in Maps increase?