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Google Maps' Moat

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Re: Google Maps' Moat

#41

Post by taurath »

ucaetano wrote: post #35
ajkjk wrote: post #9

Things like this make me think that it's a shame humanity is duplicating all this work instead of collaborating to do it once. One of the awkward failures of capitalism, I guess. At least when your product is something physical you end up with twice as many outputs. When it's just data you just do the same work twice.

> One of the awkward failures of capitalism, I guess. No, it's actually a feature: competition. With a single product in every category it would be impossible to have diversity of ideas being tested and competing. It is the same with evolution.

Here’s the thing though - if everyone shared data, they could compete on the UX. Nobody says that pharmaceutical companies aren’t competitive on the end product, but they have a shared data set in the form of all the university research. Of course they get their own data, but being “free” to not have to do basic research themselves means they can put more resources towards the end product than data gathering

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#42

Post by ucaetano »

taurath wrote: post #41
ucaetano wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the awkward failures of capitalism, I guess. No, it's actually a feature: competition. With a single product in every category it would be impossible to have diversity of ideas being tested and competing. It is the same with evolution.

Here’s the thing though - if everyone shared data, they could compete on the UX. Nobody says that pharmaceutical companies aren’t competitive on the end product, but they have a shared data set in the form of all the university research. Of course they get their own data, but being “free” to not have to do basic research themselves means they can put more resources towards the end product than data gathering

> if everyone shared data, they could compete on the UX

Why? Google seems to have a gigantic advantage in data, which is highly valuable.

Why would they give up that advantage, if they spent millions, if not billions, of dollars creating it?

And what would be the incentive to create such data if there's no economic gain from it?

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#44

Post by thex10 »

wutbrodo wrote: post #25

Is there a reason anyone uses Apple Maps, aside from wanting to avoid Google out of principle/privacy/monoculture concerns? To be clear, these are entirely legitimate reasons, but I was wondering if the product has any direct benefits for the user (which is a coherent subset of reasons given the modal users' level of concern about systemic issues). I'm not trying to randomly snipe at Apple here, I just know very litt…

I find it a much better view of the transit layer, and I actually enjoy its navigation UX, but that's about it.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#45

Post by spaceflunky »

ajkjk wrote: post #9

Things like this make me think that it's a shame humanity is duplicating all this work instead of collaborating to do it once. One of the awkward failures of capitalism, I guess. At least when your product is something physical you end up with twice as many outputs. When it's just data you just do the same work twice.

This is the wrong way to think about things. Competition is good.

If it weren't for the need to compete, would Google have spent billions on innovations like Street View, Satellite imagery, Google Earth, etc. Or would they have just said, "MapQuest has won the internet maps game, let's just let MapQuest do their own thing. No use in doing the same work twice,"

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#46

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

When can we get a flight simulator using Google Maps data? It doesn't need the fidelity of data for names of streets, places, etc. just the imagery.

If they can extrapolate building details like bay windows, then they should be able to model entire areas from enough heights and angles to represent it much better than what I've seen in flight simulators for personal use (at least last I looked).

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#47

Post by salviasloth »

ajkjk wrote: post #9

Things like this make me think that it's a shame humanity is duplicating all this work instead of collaborating to do it once. One of the awkward failures of capitalism, I guess. At least when your product is something physical you end up with twice as many outputs. When it's just data you just do the same work twice.

if they weren’t you’d just be complaining about how monopolies are a failure of capitalism.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#49

Post by jonlucc »

Maybe it's naive of me, but I would assume it won't take 6 years for Apple to redo the work that Google is ahead on. For one thing, they now know a specific feature to work toward, which cuts some time out. Then, they can likely throw more cycles at this problem than Google could 6 years ago, again reducing Google's lead. Lastly, they probably have a lot of stored raw data (satellite images specifically) that Google didn't have at the start and took time to collect multiple angles over time.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#50

Post by pbhjpbhj »

ucaetano wrote: post #42
taurath wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s the thing though - if everyone shared data, they could compete on the UX. Nobody says that pharmaceutical companies aren’t competitive on the end product, but they have a shared data set in the form of all the university research. Of course they get their own data, but being “free” to not have to do basic research themselves means they can put more resources towards the end product than data gathering

> if everyone shared data, they could compete on the UX Why? Google seems to have a gigantic advantage in data, which is highly valuable. Why would they give up that advantage, if they spent millions, if not billions, of dollars creating it? And what would be the incentive to create such data if there's no economic gain from it?

>And what would be the incentive to create such data if there's no economic gain from it? //

If the data is useful then there is an _economic_ gain, just not necessarily a profit.

If you meant "if there's no profit from it" then it was spoken like a true capitalist.

Why do anything if you're not going to be paid for it.

Why visit your mum in hospital? Why give money to the homeless for food? Why create software for others? Why teach a child a fun game? Love, altruism, interest, expediency, fun, ... and a million other reasons besides.

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