Nokia’s Here Maps Sold for $3B to Audi, BMW and Mercedes(thenextweb.com) |
Nokia’s Here Maps Sold for $3B to Audi, BMW and Mercedes(thenextweb.com) |
edit: i should have been clearer, osmand isn't just "good enough" - it is brilliant.
Or I'm missing something.
A lot of money could possibly help to get good base maps into it (by paying enough that their producers accept OSM licensing), which could help that situation...
OSM has the most complete and updated maps I have ever seen compared to Google Maps and Nokia HERE. And it has much more POI registered as well.
My only issue is that the UI of the Android app is not that good and efficient when compared to HERE.
(A part of me likes the schaudenfreude, how there's this big tech/open source thing, and for once USA isn't #1 for availablility)
It's not even a contest. Especially when $3B isn't, whatchamacallit, a huge drain on your liquidity.
Yes and No. The OSM licence is similar to the GPL. If you make a derived work, you have to share your changes back.
If OSM got a big cash bump, and was improved, then if (say) Google wants to put that improvement in Google Maps, they would be forced to release all the data that's in Google Maps. Unlikely to happen.
The vast majority of GPS systems source their map data just as Google does and then add their own value-added information.
Google only knows where I'm driving if I plan my trip with Google's tools. Otherwise, there's no connection between my GPS/maps and google.
Is there an alternative to Bing and google translate?
Here maps is the best maps here (at least inmy city), and I can understand why German car manufacturers might want it.
HERE [1] is the same way. You can access their maps for free on the web or through the apps:
But if you're building a product that needs to incorporate maps, HERE will certainly charge you for it.
[1] I hate this all-caps spelling, but it looks confusing without it.
Autonomous vehicles rely on extremely good mapping, and if the car companies don't own their own stack they are in danger of becoming mere OEMs, producing commodity hardware for someone else who extracts the value from the system. (It's debatable how well they will be able to execute, considering the quality of most in-car software.)
Also, in the short term I doubt that Google would licence maps for free.
I think this is a mistake Nokia made (several times over), they didn't want to use other companies services and wanted control over (practically) everything - unfortunately it is near impossible to be great at everything, and unfortunately their products suffered as they provided sub-par services to their users, so consumed with ownership and making as much money as possible.
I don't see Google destroying anyone in GERMANY with those privacy concerning features.
What I don't like compared to Google Maps is the general slowness of the system. After turning on the ignition, I have to wait about a minute until I can enter an address. Entering a new address (vs. loading a recent one) again takes a minute. That's why for shorter distances I still use Google Maps.
Edit: the strongest point of Google Maps, and the weakest of OSM and my in-car navigation is the geocoder.
Do you want to be in a sitution where Google can have you over a barrel?
In no particular order, things that I like:
- Wikipedia (offline). Discover articles by location
- Topographic maps (nice for hiking)
- speed camera warnings
- completely free & open source
- you can alter the options, add your own POIs, etc.
- draw tools, use polylines to measure distances
- find any POI by name, category or location (they're *all* indexed)
- copy a position's latitude/longitude to the clipboard
- start route from a distant starting point (instead of current location)
- discover opening hours of shops/etc.
- launch calls from a POI's attached contact number
- public transport (nice for city trips)
- GPX logging
- tools to support OpenStreetMap editing
- route along saved .gpx/.kml track
- ...
EDIT: Formatting
PS: In the past I've even gone so far as to add phone numbers to my favourite pizza deliveries on OpenStreetMap to be able to call them using OsmAnd.
Unfortunately, I live in the center of The Left Wing of the Internet^tm (Berlin) and every anthill is already mapped around here.
Possibily. But a mass import is often not a good idea. You need mappers to map (possibly from the base map).
Then Audi, BMW and Mercedes spent $1b, and at the end of the day, their maps are the exact same as Ford's (who spend $0).
And coming from the web interface, I honestly thought the map is just that, a map, with no data regarding traffic other than maybe one-way streets. And that it simply doesn't support routing.
I’m not okay with being tracked, and I don’t care whether the tracker swears to be or not to be evil. And no, this is not negotiable.
- Visiting a physician a lot? You future health insurance might wanna know.
- Spend a lot of time in the red light district? That must be worth a couple of bucks to your employer who wants to get rid of you.
You might think that this is far fetched and right now, it still is. But 20 years ago, most people would have considered it very implausible and offensive that their private conversations (emails) or library searches (web searches) are sold to advertisers. Well, lets see what (some) people find acceptable 20 years from now.
Personally I prefer my users to get
to use the best providers of the
services they want to use
The car manufacturers need an alternative, so they can walk away from Google if this happens.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_alternative_to_a_negotiat...
Especially before having to create and provide your own relatively complex solution (mapping is not easy imvho).
Yes, today. But what if Google Maps wins? What if all the other options go bust? Here the car companies are ensuring that Google Maps has a compeditor.
1st, Germans really like their privacy, 2nd, We have inductive loops at EVERY single lane of every single intersection. Meaning, you can get live traffic data without needing to know where everyone is.
What? I'm German and I have never heard about this. I also can't find anything to support this.
I am aware of induction used for traffic light switching, but certainly not at every intersection, let alone in every lane.
Might be not enough to prefer online navigation to offline, but it is a reason.
At least in the bigger cities for traffic shaping they measure the traffic at every lane of every intersection.