what3words is a large hash table mapping 3x3m squares of land with the key being a unique three word phrase and the value being the 3x3 grid square. That's really all it is. Oh, by the way, if the service goes down, everything grinds to a halt because there is no backup analog system (maps, etc).

It's a solution searching for a problem, and existing mail and building addressing schemes are far superior to it.

So it'd be easy for everybody to contribute their address and GPS coordinates to an open database. Eventually it'd be usable enough that most people wouldn't need to access the paid for DB.

It's easy for humans to memorize, though I don't know exactly what that's worth...

When all you need now is '123 Fake St, 12345' to get a map of a location and directions to it on your phone, not much. You can locate '123 Fake St, 12345' without a phone, so it wins.

As others have pointed out, lots of places in underdeveloped countries don't have street names and numbers.

As others have pointed out, and I quote, "a proprietary system from a for-profit company should not be used as the basis for addressing in any country."

ehh, muddy.ashes.pardon maps to US Holocaust Memorial Museum... (https://www.ushmm.org/) insensitive for sure, is that just a coincidence?

Apparently this discussion has been on here before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11896883

from the website, https://what3words.com/about/ :

> Street addresses worldwide are inaccurate, unreliable and don’t exist at all in many places. Poor addressing is expensive and frustrating, hampers economic growth and development, restricts social mobility and affects lives.

> Street addresses can usually identify a building, but aren’t accurate enough to help a courier or taxi driver find the correct entrance. This results in delayed or failed deliveries, and numerous ‘where are you’ phone calls.

oven.likes.zips is much easier to communicate and memorize than 40.7484° N, 73.9857° W (location of empire state building).

Yeah, because "350 5th Ave, NYC" is just so hard to communicate...

Exactly. City it's usually obvious. With an address you need to memorize street and number, 2 things. With 3 random words, there's no hint to remind you of what it might be. With an address, at least you could say it's on Main St. if you don't remember the whole address.