this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2024
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I would say that it's not hard to replace. I mean, all you need is an app that regularly dumps GPS data and a list of signal strengths from radios that broadcast unique IDs to start building out a database.
What's hard is doing one that is as complete and accurate as Google's, because Google is hoovering up data from most cell phones about the location of a lot of devices.
You are glossing over a lot of infrastructure and development, when boiled down to the basics you are right. So it is basically a question of getting enough users to have that app installed. Which is not impossible given that we do have initiatives like OpenStreetMap.
The crowdsourcing part is what I meant. And you probably underestimate infrastructure as well.
This also isn't something you can just let a few volunteers do once and forget about it. It needs to be something that people run often on their phones. Wi-Fi access points change, cell towers sometimes change. You need to keep this data up-to-date. With Google's or Apple's location service, when a person buys a new router, it's probably added to the database within hours or days at worst.