“As a product team, it’s a pretty weird experience to not own 80% of the pixels that your users interact with.”
Lyft priced rides on its own routes and then handed drivers to Google, which often picked a different route. Its in-house maps, built on volunteer-made OpenStreetMap, now run 70% of rides. Lyft keeps the money it no longer pays Google. Volunteers drew the map for free, and Lyft calls the result its future.