Nothing forces Malaysia to use Google
No law makes a Malaysian app use Google Maps, and other maps exist:
- OpenStreetMap, the free map anyone can edit and anyone can use. Bound’s map is built from it.
- TomTom and HERE, which sell map and traffic data to car makers and apps. Bound uses TomTom for live traffic.
- Apple Maps, on iPhones.
- GrabMaps. Grab used Google and HERE until it decided they weren’t local enough for Southeast Asia, then built its own map with its drivers’ help.
So why does everyone end up on Google?
Because of what is on it. Every day Malaysians add to Google Maps without thinking about it: a shop owner lists their kedai, someone leaves a review, a driver suggests a fix, a phone stuck in a jam reports how slow the road is. Over twenty years that has become the most complete list of Malaysian places anywhere.
That data is built by Malaysians, but only Google decides who may use it. When you post a review or a photo you still own it, but you give Google a worldwide licence to use it. Google’s terms for developers then stop other apps from storing that data, copying it or showing it on any map that isn’t Google’s.
So a developer who wants good place search in Malaysia has two choices: rent it from Google, on Google’s rules and prices, or build it from nothing. Almost everyone rents.
What Google gets right
- The most places. Small shops, new cafés, opening hours and photos. Nobody else comes close in Malaysia today.
- It just works. A developer gets search, maps and directions in an afternoon, and people already know how it behaves.
- Cheap to start. A small app pays little or nothing until it grows.
What it costs Malaysia
- What we add isn’t ours. Malaysians build the map; one company decides who gets to use it, and what it costs.
- The rules can change overnight. In 2018 Google changed its map prices and many apps saw their bills multiply. An app built on someone else’s map can only accept.
- Every search passes through Google. When you look up a place in an app built on Google, Google sees that search too.
- Our data sits under another country’s law. In October 2026 Malaysia told civil servants to uninstall Waze, because the company that controls Waze’s data answers to Israeli law. Any map run from abroad raises the same question.
- Nothing to build on. Without an open map, every new Malaysian app starts from zero, or pays rent.
What an open map changes
OpenStreetMap shows the other way. Anyone can add to it, and anyone may use it for free, as long as they credit it and share their improvements to the data. Its Malaysian roads are good. Its shops, stalls and new places have big gaps, and those gaps are why most apps still rent from Google.
That gap is what Bound asks drivers to help close. Places you add can go to OpenStreetMap, where every app can use them, and Bound plans to publish the toll lanes and fares drivers share as open data for the whole country. Not Google’s, not even ours: everyone’s.
See how you can help, or read how open source works.