Ask HN: Looking for a Google Maps Contact
I am looking for a contact at Google on the Maps / Directions team who can assist with fixing various issues with Googles datasets for Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban.
Maps issues for South Africa includes incorrect suburb names on addresses (for example Matroosfontein pulls through for addresses in Delft (official suburb name according to the City of Cape Town Official Suburb names dataset.
Editing addresses one by one to fix suburb names to fix issues with geocoding issues takes a few months to go live on the geocoding API.
There are also routing issues where Google Maps chooses routes that does not make sense. Also with the directions API it ignores valid routes from areas like Strandfontein instead of going up the M17 (Old Strandfontein Road) instead of the N2.
The distance matrix seems to have incorrect distances for addresses where you expect it to go via M17 instead of the N2.