Corporate mapping in OpenStreetMap – shifting trends in global evolution and small-scale effects

Since 2016, corporations are increasingly getting involved in OpenStreetMap (OSM). Large corporations such as Apple, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon have hired large teams to edit in OSM and contribute map data on a global scale. At the same time, some observers and the OSM mapping communities have expressed concerns about corporate involvement. Previous studies have been able to identify global patterns, but their small-scale effects on other non-corporate or volunteer mappers have been difficult to quantify. The presented analysis attempts to contribute to this debate by analyzing mapping trends for corporate and non-corporate contributors at two scales. First, we investigated the impact of corporate mapping on the global scale between 2016 and 2024. Corporate editors filled in the gaps left by other volunteer mapping efforts mainly in high- and medium-income countries. 36 countries accounted for 88% of all corporate mapping activity. Furthermore, our results reveal an unexpected declining number of overall corporate edits since 2021, despite an apparent increase in the number of active companies. Second, we study the impact of corporate mapping on country- and small-scale mapping. For this analysis, we considered data from the United Arab Emirates, Colombia, Vietnam, and Mexico. Despite concerns in the OSM communities, our results suggest that there seems to be no general tendency for corporate contributions to discourage non-corporate contributions. Still, given the fact that overall corporate edits have been declining, this raises the question if there is a change in the companies’ approach toward OSM. We conclude that future research needs to shed light on this shift by investigating the accompanying effects on spatial data quality and OSM community sustainability.