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Context is everything.
Detailed stories on technology startups, business and economic current affairs.
Detailed stories on technology startups, business and economic current affairs.
Machine learning and algorithmic muscle aside, there’s plenty of human intervention that goes into mapping India’s roads, buildings and landmarks.
Editor's note: The boyish voice on the other end of the line has a tell-tale Telugu inflection. It belongs to someone who used to work 10 minutes away from Google’s Hyderabad campus. The company that employed him was GlobalLogic, an offshore vendor for a handful of mapping services, including Google Maps, TomTom, and HERE. He asks not to be named, so we’ll call him M for attribution. One had contacted a swathe of former and current GlobalLogic analysts—that’s what mapping operators are called—after learning that not everything in Google Maps is the end result of juiced-up machine learning. M is one of only two who agreed to speak. His day would begin with a “package dump”, which is a high-fidelity satellite image of a specific area. Just like a honeycomb is composed of hundreds of hexagonal cells, each country map is the sum total of hundreds of image packages. Mumbai alone, M shares, has 50-odd image packages. Within GlobalLogic’s Google Maps workforce is a team that maps roads. Its analysts perform the unenviable task of marking every single attribute in a Google …
Machine learning and algorithmic muscle aside, there’s plenty of human intervention that goes into mapping India’s roads, buildings and landmarks.
Editor's note: The boyish voice on the other end of the line has a tell-tale Telugu inflection. It belongs to someone who used to work 10 minutes away from Google’s Hyderabad campus. The company that employed him was GlobalLogic, an offshore vendor for a handful of mapping services, including Google Maps, TomTom, and HERE. He asks not to be named, so we’ll call him M for attribution. One had contacted a swathe of former and current GlobalLogic analysts—that’s what mapping operators are called—after learning that not everything in Google Maps is the end result of juiced-up machine learning. M is one of only two who agreed to speak. His day would begin with a “package dump”, which is a high-fidelity satellite image of a specific area. Just like a honeycomb is composed of hundreds of hexagonal cells, each country map is the sum total of hundreds of image packages. Mumbai alone, M shares, has 50-odd image packages. Within GlobalLogic’s Google Maps workforce is a team that maps roads. Its analysts perform the unenviable task of marking every single attribute in a Google …
India’s second-largest brokerage by active clients wants to handle IPOs as a merchant banker. But gaining a foothold in the highly competitive sector is easier said than done.
Influence cannot be manufactured through diaspora networks, carefully branded events or political donations. It requires honesty and credibility.
Chinese diplomats to India are saying all the right things for Indian ears, but Beijing’s policy actions are moving in the opposite direction.
India’s second-largest brokerage by active clients wants to handle IPOs as a merchant banker. But gaining a foothold in the highly competitive sector is easier said than done.
Influence cannot be manufactured through diaspora networks, carefully branded events or political donations. It requires honesty and credibility.
Chinese diplomats to India are saying all the right things for Indian ears, but Beijing’s policy actions are moving in the opposite direction.
