Unique 3-word identifiers for every 3 meter square on Earth

This company&#x2F;app pops up on HN with some regularity, and attracts a fair amount of criticism:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=37359256">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=37359256</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=27350975">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=27350975</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=27058271">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=27058271</a><p>It&#x27;s business practices seem distasteful, several legal threats against competitors and critics, heavy covert &quot;submarine&quot; advertising (i.e. ads masquerading as news), and apparently unexplained popularity among policy-makers despite criticism from those on the front line (e.g. emergency services). Technical criticism centres on the fact that it&#x27;s algorithm is not as good as it could be, hence risking lives, and is not open. Several alternatives exist, some of which the creators claim address these technical issues:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20970664">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20970664</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=31829267">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=31829267</a><p>I&#x27;ve no horse in this race, but frankly what3words seems a bad choice and an unpleasant organisation.<p>Edit to add links to reported issues and legal actions:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;6KVvL" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;6KVvL</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2021&#x2F;04&#x2F;30&#x2F;what3words-legal-threat-whatfreewords" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2021&#x2F;04&#x2F;30&#x2F;what3words-legal-threat-wh...</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20210430005537&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;aarontoponce&#x2F;status&#x2F;1387933438305394690" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20210430005537&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.co...</a>

What3Words is an interesting idea, but the lack of locality and propriety nature of the codes makes me doubtful of using it for anything important.<p>I prefer the pluscodes introduced by Google as it is open source, useful offline, conveys locality between codes, and doesn’t hinge on the use of English.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;maps.google.com&#x2F;pluscodes&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;maps.google.com&#x2F;pluscodes&#x2F;</a>

What3Words has been discussed dozens of times on HN, but the most relevant one is probably this analysis of the algorithm and the properties of the generated codes, as well as its companion piece:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=27015046">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=27015046</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=27058271">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=27058271</a>

Rather than long&#x2F;lat, I love the concept of using Zooko’s triangle for a geospatial problem, such as:<p><pre><code> - human meaningful - decentralized - secure </code></pre> However, w3w&#x27;s isn&#x27;t that. It is a centralized system which is actively enforced and it isn&#x27;t secure.<p>There is actually quite a lot of critics of w3w, such as: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cybergibbons.com&#x2F;security-2&#x2F;why-what3words-is-not-suitable-for-safety-critical-applications&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cybergibbons.com&#x2F;security-2&#x2F;why-what3words-is-not-su...</a>

&quot;Our opinion is that the proprietary W3W serivce is unhelpful and dangerous.&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;w3w.me.ss&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;w3w.me.ss&#x2F;</a> What 3 Words is a Mess<p>---<p>Personally I think the *idea* is great and is actually useful but the closed and internet only nature of this service is troubling and the behaviour of the company doesn&#x27;t seem that positive. There are better solutions which run with the same idea. This company is VC backed and is using (it seems to me) all of their funding for marketing.<p>The better solutions don&#x27;t have vc backing and no millions to spend on marketing.

Not sure I want to use what seems like a fully-closed standard for something as frequent as sharing locations when open alternatives exist.

I have an old and unfinished article [1] that uses geohash &#x2F; quadtiles to implement the same thing.<p>If your goal isn&#x27;t &quot;every location on Earth&quot;, you have a smaller bounding box (like a country or &quot;all of Europe&quot;) and this will result in the squares being more precise, or the identifiers or word lists being shorter. Could be worth the trade-off depending on the requirements.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gkbrk.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Quadtiles-full&#x2F;#encoding-coordinates-as-english-words" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gkbrk.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Quadtiles-full&#x2F;#encoding-coordina...</a>

A gov agency or a known non-profit org coming up with it would have been better.

I dislike my location forms a phrase with a negative connotation.

Is What3Words a for profit company? Is it a good idea to base solutions on it? What value does this company brings in long run?

I wish this was more popular, with huge buildings addresses are not enough to deliver packages.

Ah, the investor cash incinerator that is what3words!