OpenStreetMap

Created in 2004 by a British academic, OSM is a sort of Wikipedia for maps, with volunteers contributing geographic information into a centralized database, which can then be accessed by anyone for free.

OSM was mostly the domain of academics and hobbyists until 2012 when Google announced it would start charging more businesses for using Google Maps. Since then, companies from Amazon to Meta to Snapchat have built mapping products on OSM.