How Long Does It Take For Smartphone Apps To Get Road Changes?
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    19 years
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When changes are made to roads near me and when certain new businesses are opened, I check to see how long it take Google Maps, Waze and Open Street Maps to update. One of the projects near me this summer has been near 44.779760, -93.062299. The project was an update to the intersection that had been a T intersection, but now has a smooth directional curve.
The road had been closed, but reopened almost two weeks ago, even though the entire project isn't finished, yet. A couple of days ago Open Street Map was the first one I was aware of that showed the update. Today, Google Maps also showed the change.
Waze still does not show the update, but I suspect it won't be too much longer before they show the update.
Several years ago a roundabout was added near me. I was favorably impressed by how quickly the online maps showed the change.
I Googled to see how they accomplish this. Here is the reply I got:
Google learns about road changes by combining official government data, automated AI imagery analysis, crowdsourced user reports, and anonymous movement telemetry from millions of mobile devices.
Here
And yet it takes 2 or 3 Garmin map updates for these changes to post. Some road changes made over 10 years ago where I live still haven't showed up. I assume Garmin still uses the Here database. I wonder why it takes so long?