This is the WaPo article that The Straits Times regurgitates and adds very little to.
Now I can shamelessly use this comment's air of legitimacy as a foothold to encourage people to try using and contributing to OpenStreetMap. In terms of a business directory, it's often worse because so much business information on Google Maps is maintained by business owners themselves (you can make a difference in improving it on OSM, and it's very easy once you have the hang of it).
But there are use cases Google Maps simply sucks at and gives OpenStreetMap the advantage in places where OSM's data is even modestly complete.