Why should we support google maps? Are we really getting benefitted? In the long run, Will Google offer Google maps free of cost. If I role back to those days. Email was offered free. Now emails are getting commercialized. You have to pay when you reach a certain limit. Will it happen to other Google products like google maps etc. This is just my thought. I don’t believe when someone says it’s free. We need to understand why it is free and how long it is free?
I’d love to contribute as long as it is free, if I have to pay at some point I may not contribute. But I believe this will be free for forever as many other services of Google is free too. Like search, translate, photos to name a few. And many others which are ad based.
So do not worry about it.
we should support Google maps because if we do not contribute to google maps people only can find a map, not a place. place details like the review, photos, videos they will not get it. when we share these on google maps, people like you and me also getting help from every single suggestion, photos, and videos. we can see the place details even we can make a good decision to visit any place by checking them.
@Komban contribution to Maps for edits, updates, photos, reviews etc are voluntary. If you feel there is value doing it, then others will benefit also from your contributions.
Specific to my experience, it’s like this. I use Maps daily, all the time, for locating places, navigation, finding contact numbers for businesses etc. Some long time back, many a times, I had many of these experiences of finding a wrong number, and not being able to call or contact them, So I took time to go all the way to the shop only to find they don’t have what I want at the moment, but I didn’t update the number. And the next time, also, I got upset with myself because, I still couldn’t call, because the number was wrong. So after 2-3 times for that location, the next time I went there, I got their correct number, and then updated Maps, and after that, I didn’t have issue of contacting them. And guess what, what I did, helps everyone else who is trying to contact them also. So, at least for me, I try my best (not always possible) to check the contact information for businesses I visit so if next time I need to contact them, Maps will have the correct information for me. So, in my experience, I do benefit from it. This is just 1 positive example of my contribution to my use of Maps.
And of course we don’t know what the future holds, we can only do based on what we know today.
Regarding Gmail it’s free, only unlimited storage is not. That’s the same for almost all email services out there. I guess, it’s our duty to keep our storage within the limit, ie deleting old unnecessary emails, and downloading big attachments and deleting them etc. Also, do note that the limit is actually in Google Drive, which your 15GB free base storage for Gmail is shared with Photos and Drive, it’s not only just your email, you may want to check what’s using up your storage in Drive if you find that photos are taking up too much storage.
This link may be useful as a quick read https://www.localguidesconnect.com/t5/General-Discussion/Free-up-space-in-your-Google-Drive-for-photos-videos/m-p/510165
Thanks, everyone for your views to my question. Even I am a great fan of Google and thats why I am here. I am just taking others opinion and views in this regards and no hard feelings, please. Twenty years ago, we used floppy discs and CDs. We talk file sizes in MBs but now its GBs and further, it will reach to TBs. Soon portable hard disc will disappear slowly and cloud storage will come into effect. With the advancement of technology and people getting benefitted, we are always going ahead with the use of memory space. So 15 GB is nothing in another few years time if you live in a developed country where you will be forced to use technology for everything. There are plenty of good things about Google, for example, most of my shopping bills are emailed which is a wonderful thing reducing the carbon footprint. All my utility bills (electricity, gas, water, phone, council tax etc) are nowadays are online and I can download and store it in my email account. Google is now amazing but will it deliver always such services to people and the community is what matters. We all know there is no competitor for Google. Let’s continue posting our thoughts.
@Komban Google here for business for sure. You know providing a free service is not always possible. Where most of the similar companies give 5 GB it is giving 15 GB. Managing so much data and storage needs money and that is why from somewhere they need to make money. Google has not of other business out there. And in this data, nobody knows what will happen to a service in the next 5 years. Lots of services stop offering every year. So just sit back, contribute and if anything changes at some point decide then.
Thank you SaifIS, Afrademon, and StephenAbraham for your valuable comments and your time. Much appreciated.