It would still be useful for Germany then

I think paper is a good test for complexity: Never let administration become so overarching that you cannot do it with the same amount of people and purely based on paper.

Right. Amazon, run like Sears pre-computer.

FTFA:

> it centers on citizen experience rather than administrative convenience

There is not paper, real or implied, involved in that goal.

And yet we still enter zip code after the rest of the address.

Huh. In the UK we usually enter postcode plus house number and have the computer look up the rest of the address (even though that's a paid API).

A UK post code is much more specific than a five digit zip code which might be one reason why.

Good point, but because the postcode database was privatised it will always have to be a paid service which is why not everyone uses it.

It's still paid even if it's public. The difference is now the people who use it pay for it.

This sounds reasonable. However there was a study showing major economic benefits if was free. These benefits came from more people implementing it, time saved by all those additional users, removal of licensing hassle.

Also the entire database can be incorporated into things like FOSS map software, or free map data. Websites can have the DB stored locally so do not rely on an external API.

We would get more utility out of it that way.

We would also not have the extra cost from the profit made on selling the data.

I know what you mean, but it would also be of economic benefit if you worked for free and any downstream customers all got that discount of the profit you make from selling your time.

A lot of sites these days have some sort of live search functionality that apparently knows about all addresses. There, I can type in my house number and maybe the first three letters of my street name and it somehow manages to find me.