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On the other hand, I've been trying to submit changes to Google for several new and vacated roads for over a year (having already updated OSM) and they are constantly rejected. I suspect it is much more that their updates are responsive to car traffic. The segments I'm submitting are or were low-traffic although they include a road that a local municipality has directed people to in official communication for overflow yard waste after some big, recent storms.
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I had a similar experience with Google Maps, I used to live in a place where the house on Google maps was located on the wrong street, like one parallel street off. I put in a few requests from time to time because deliveries were a huge pain, to no avail. I opened a thread on some Google forum or support place and then it was mentioned that I actually can't change that because only the city is allowed to... why I get the option in the app I don't fully understand. At some point it got fixed but I have no idea why. Of course it was a few months before I moved out
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Google can cheat a little, especially for new roads since they notice when someone is driving over it. When there was a redesign of an intersection near here, someone marked the road as completed in OSM maybe half an hour after it was opened (we have a few quite active mappers), and Google had it open about two hours later and I suspect no one changed the data directly.
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Waze definitely does this[1]. As a map editor, I can mark a road segment as closed and it will stay closed for as long as I say, unless reverted by another editor or traffic is observed moving through that closed segment (based on parameters that they set).

This kind of cheating usually works extremely well, from my observation.

Anyhow, Google owns Waze and data goes back and forth between there and Google Maps. They're like two heads of the same snake, so it's implicit that the same thing also works on Google Maps.

[1]: https://www.waze.com/discuss/t/closures/374712#p-2273808-aut...

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