Finally, my time has come! A topic I'm both very passionate about and have a lot of experience with.

> As a result, domestic technology firms like Naver and Kakao have cornered the market for mapping services, making navigation harder for foreign visitors unfamiliar with their platforms.

Oh no! Poor tourists have to download a different map app! Such inconvenience and hardship! It's the opposite. Whenever I go abroad and get to use a local app instead of a FAANG monstrosity, it's usually a delight.

And there is no better example than Maps. Even without knowing a lick of Korean, the discerning HN reader will immediately spot the difference in degree of enshittification with the two local market leaders [1]. Google Maps? Massive space to 3 companies that clearly paid the most for ads. I can't emphasize just how random the companies are, there's no other reason than ads that those are shown. The pictured area is tourist heavy, so plenty of Google Maps users. And dozens and dozens of establishment even just in the screenshot with 100x+ the visitors, including Google Maps searches, than the 3 companies that do get their own name and icon.

Everything else is a grey mess, unusable. Public transit, metro lines? Never heard of them. Different types of streets? Colors that make sense and increase readibility? Nope. Why? Again, go make the ads stand out more.

And unfortunately this is unrelated to Korea - Google Maps is this awful anywhere, as a result of being a monopolistic ads company. Such a prime example of why they need to be broken up.

The local map apps in Korea, Naver Maps and Kakao Maps, are the poster child of just how good it is for a society to protect themselves against the FAANGs. 50 million people get to use a much better navigation app thanks to it. In addition, it creates jobs and keeps all related revenue inside the country. Win-win-win. The only one who loses out is Google, and the few tourists who can't be bothered to install a local app (available in multiple languages, by the way). Even for those, it's not like Google Maps is banned; it's definitely functional. It has the public transit, it has the restaurants and so on.

[1] https://ibb.co/hJkL3xRY

Naver and Kakao lists businesses for free but offers paid services to businesses for enhanced visibility and operations. Their combined annual revenues is around 10 billion USD. And the apps still suck. They could do with some competition.