what3words? Tried using it, for about a month, only to find nobody was prepared to also install the app, or remember 3 words chosen by an unknown third party, or clicking “Navigate to” in that app and then opening Google Maps, while having been obliged to create an account with them, which by that point on android phones is already being milked as advertiser food because they’re opened using just 1 Google account that happens to be on the same device. It’s just another deep hole towards collecting big data from innocent android users. If anything, it seems to be trying to patent location info, which is ridiculous. And the “///” seem to be a way to induce thoughts of a protocol being used, but it isn’t really a protocol, just window-dressing by an (undoubtedly) overpaid design-squad.
What I would prefer is a translation of LAT + LONG into just one numbers string. That way you could just start at 1, which could for example be the UTC or GMT 0 or something random that is used a lot, and end with whatever many locations have been tagged using a number. That way it would be fair, just as fair as people being first with a domain name in the 90s, buying their firstname.tld or lastname.tld and run with it. Either way, all you need is 1 resolving database, from a number to lat+longitude and that would be sufficient for everybody running a navigation app or maps database. The database could grow as people add their used location. It requires a root, like with DNS, and a (short) delay for providing non-collision non-doubling registration of numbers, for that you could run this translation database on a blockchain, to avoid doubles or mistakes. One shared database with free access that would only need to do one thing; Add +1 to the last added number. A few days of brainstorming on its code and UI, let it be implemented as an addition to Google Maps, Bing, OpenStreetMaps etc. and you’re done. Problem solved. I highly doubt that a nr would be harder to communicate than three random unrelated (or even accidentally offensive) words.
What’s more; You could add letters of the alphabet to the number string, like “99AFA” by which you could describe the height of the location tag, the elevation level, or something! “A” could be mapped to lowest and “ZZZ” to highest elevation where humans reside on Earth. Another problem solved.