How Mapbox Is Winning Over Developers to Challenge Google's Mapping Dominance • Hacker News Board

Re: How Mapbox Is Winning Over Developers to Challenge Google's Mapping Dominance

#51

Post by mwj » Tue, May 08, 2018, 4:49 PM UTC

lukeqsee wrote: post #33

There are more alternatives to Google & Mapbox that mostly use OpenStreetMap as a backing data source: https://openmaptiles.org (only map tiles) https://stadiamaps.com (map tiles, static maps & routing) https://www.thunderforest.com (only maps) https://geocoder.opencagedata.com (only geocoding) https://geocode.earth (only geocoding) A laundry listing: https://switch2osm.org/providers/ Tile providers are very thankful…

Hmmm I evaluated a lot of those (mainly OSM-based) geocoders recently. Unfortunately the quality of results is orders of magnitude worse than Google. The only ones that even came close were Mapbox, Mapquest and Here.

Re: How Mapbox Is Winning Over Developers to Challenge Google's Mapping Dominance

#52

Post by jstandard » Tue, May 08, 2018, 5:09 PM UTC

mtmail wrote: post #46

Quanttek wrote: post #36

> Widespread adoption has other benefits. Mapbox doesn't need to send out pricey cars or satellites in space to map the world. "Map data is not like food, air, water that's just around. It takes active work to make it," says Young Hahn, Mapbox's CTO. Whenever someone opens a Mapbox map, that person's phone or computer sends three pieces of anonymous data back to the company: longitude, latitude and a time stamp. Thes…

The Mapbox map is tracking its users. Based on that location data they can derive unmapped roads, turning restrictions, traffic jams (and time-of-day congestion), construction. And feeding other machine learning system to improve the data set. In a recent press release they talk about deployed sensors, no longer users. Google Maps knows when rush hour at your local gym is, Mapbox wants the same. It's a big selling po…

Any ideas about how they're solving the need to constantly update meta data like speed limits or POI names? This is the part of the OSM data set I found particularly weak when comparing vs. Google Maps.

Re: How Mapbox Is Winning Over Developers to Challenge Google's Mapping Dominance

#53

Post by wastedhours » Tue, May 08, 2018, 5:10 PM UTC

dabernathy89 wrote: post #43

wccrawford wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on your hobby project. Google's free tier gives unlimited map views, commercial or not. (Edit: On native apps.) Mapbox's free tier only gives 50k map views, and only for non-commercial apps. If you're a paid app, you also have to pay $499 per month on top of your usage.

Mapbox also gives unlimited map views for native mobile apps. Pricing is instead based on monthly active users (50k free).

Not if your app is paid though, and then the $499 only covers you to 250 seats (!).

I like what they're doing, and wanted to use them for a web app with restricted access, but certainly not going to pay $499pcm for a side project.

Re: How Mapbox Is Winning Over Developers to Challenge Google's Mapping Dominance

#54

Post by iagovar » Tue, May 08, 2018, 5:13 PM UTC

How does mapbox compare to carto.com ?

Re: How Mapbox Is Winning Over Developers to Challenge Google's Mapping Dominance

#55

Post by lukeqsee » Tue, May 08, 2018, 5:22 PM UTC

iagovar wrote: post #54

How does mapbox compare to carto.com ?

Carto offers many of the same services, but their focus is more on the ability to analyze vs display data. Their big sales push is "Location Intelligence" vs simply providing various standard geoservices.

I consider Carto and Mapbox to be tangential services in many respects.

Re: How Mapbox Is Winning Over Developers to Challenge Google's Mapping Dominance

#56

Post by zymhan » Tue, May 08, 2018, 5:36 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #25

tarr11 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's in Forbes?

forbes.com/sites might as well be wordpress.com, it's just some blog. Pretty amazing how little such a big brand is actually worth.

Note that the author is actually a Forbes Staff member. It's not _just_ a blog post.

But in general, definitely look closely at the forbes.com/sites articles.

Re: How Mapbox Is Winning Over Developers to Challenge Google's Mapping Dominance

#57

Post by skate22 » Tue, May 08, 2018, 5:37 PM UTC

zerebubuth wrote: post #24

bazizbaziz wrote: post #14

Last I checked, MapBox's WebGL based vector tile renderer was a cut above the rest. For simple mapping, Google's stuff may cut it, but MapBox has the ability to draw complex vector polygons over a wide area that render/zoom/scroll fast and provide a nice experience. This is pretty important if you want to provide fine grained analysis of geographic areas. If you wanted this on GMaps, you were stuck rendering all your…

Mapzen, a now sadly defunct mapping startup, also had an awesome (if I say so myself - I used to work there, but not on that team) vector tile renderer for browser and mobile. Check it out at https://github.com/tangrams Also, there was a great interactive style editor ( https://github.com/tangrams/tangram-play ), although it seems the demo site is broken now :-(

Any chance mapzen would open source the code used to make metro extracts? The formats your team had to offer were so much nicer than working with raw OSM data

Re: How Mapbox Is Winning Over Developers to Challenge Google's Mapping Dominance

#58

Post by kirchhoff » Tue, May 08, 2018, 5:47 PM UTC

The era of mashups / cool web projects using Google Maps has ended. Their recent 28x price change (from $0.50 / 1000 views to $14 per 1000) has been cleverly disguised by the simultaneous rebranding to the "Google Maps Platform".

Re: How Mapbox Is Winning Over Developers to Challenge Google's Mapping Dominance

#59

Post by redsparrow » Tue, May 08, 2018, 5:50 PM UTC

valar_m wrote: post #3

I have no evidence to support it, but this article feels like bought and paid for PR.

Paul Graham's essay on the topic:

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Re: How Mapbox Is Winning Over Developers to Challenge Google's Mapping Dominance

#60

Post by rglover » Tue, May 08, 2018, 5:51 PM UTC

Mapbox is a better product and a better development experience. It's also a better styling experience. It's a great case study on the pursuit of quality as a way to draw people in.