Many large corporations including Apple are pouring millions of dollars annually into OpenStreetMaps so they have access to a decent map system.
Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating
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Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating
#382Well I have several zozo water tanks filled to the brim with clean rain water. Just give me a shout.
Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating
#383What’s up HN?! Always fun to find an article of mine on here. What I’ve learned so far: I’ve underestimated the important of their place data to the rest of the search apparatus, and likely underestimated the relevance of Maps to their autonomous vehicle strategy. What I remain curious about that I’d love your speculation on: why do they bother with the Google Maps Platform at all? They have plenty of ways to monetiz…
For me, as an OSM contributorm it was incredibly sad to read
> the incredible year OpenStreetMap is having, largely because of enormous investment from Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Mapbox (FAAMm)
Their contributions were (as far as I know) not really important compared to what was contributed by hobbyists, and overall their activities likely caused more damage than benefit. Mostly due to associating OSM with toxic brands such as Facebook or Amazon and discouraging new contributors.
Note that linked article seems to be not supporting this claim that 2020 is successful for OSM mostly due to corporations.
Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating
#384Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating
#385Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point is that nobody expected Google to just hike their price for mapping by 1400% overnight. If they can do it with one product, what’s stopping anyone else in a similar dominant market position doing the same?
Culture, and the reputation it earns. I’m no amazon apologist, but one thing I trust them to do is keep my things running as they are.
In a world where there are three players, culture and reputation are not worth much, if not only at the beginning. Maybe 5/10/15 years from now the software and competencies to manage bare metal will be only behind the doors of those three companies, and at that point it will be economically convenient for them to act as a cartel and increase prices.
Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating
#386Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your theory is that if other large companies do something, it must be morally acceptable? Even if that's true, which I'm not persuaded of, Amazon's enormous market power makes a big difference. As a consumer, I don't want Amazon to "optimize revenue streams" when that reduces the reward to market participants to be innovative and deliver high quality.
> Your theory is that if other large companies do something, it must be morally acceptable You left something out, "as long as it doesn't effect me (yet), and large companies do it, it must be morally acceptable." I don't know why we defend them. Without Google we still go on. Without us, or support for their practices, they dramatically change or they disappear.
To be fair, these are generally the companies that have got us through the pandemic relatively unscathed.
Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating
#387Earlier quoted context omitted.
Culture, and the reputation it earns. I’m no amazon apologist, but one thing I trust them to do is keep my things running as they are.
And what’s your contingency if they decide that they’re going to hike the price because Jeff’s underwater lair has sprung a leak?
I’d actually worry more about post bezos Amazon, he’s been running the show for years, it’s predictable- after..
Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating
#388I worked at a company that heavily used the maps API in 2018. The 1,400% price hike really was an eye opener. It wasn't just the money involved, which was large, but the fact that it came so suddenly and with so much magnitude. Google's choice to bump these prices made me realize that they could do the same thing with their compute cloud pricing or other APIs, again with little notice. That, in turn, led to the reali…
"This one choice by the maps team likely cost Google significantly in the medium to long term" Reminiscent of the Google Reader thing. Google Reader was used by, in global terms, a tiny number of people. But today those same people get to make purchasing decisions at a large array of well funded companies, and they're still bitter about Reader shutting down.
Can't agree more.
Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating
#389As the story goes Marissa Mayer was "demoted" to take charge of Maps/Places group that till that point no one much cared. To keep her into "leash", she got the budgets she wanted and she truly threw herself at Maps. She went out and bought enormous amount of expensive data and eventually setup the team with more than thousand people. Until that time still no one much cared. It wasn't unlike iPhone came out and everyone woke up to maps and Mayer's efforts paid off.
After Mayer left, Google Maps has stagnated. There is not much of next horizon chase, big bets any more. Budget growth had been slowing down as well.
However, I'm doubtful Apple will ever leap from Google Maps. You don't see hundreds of cars mapping the alleys all over the world. OSM gets better but last 1-3% is unattainable for them. More importantly, Apple significantly lacks in AI/ML skill sets. Siri is still shit show precisely for same reason.
Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating
#390Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think there's a risk here but I'm not sure it goes as far as you suggest. There are still plenty of entities, particularly larger ones, that buy their own metal because at some scales it becomes far cheaper to run in a COLO (at least acc to near monthly articles posted on HN). I'd therefore put the risk that only big vendors will be able to buy hardware as low. That said, as ARM or custom chips gain market share wi…
If those entities would be any risk, they would already be bought. Or they will be long gone due to google/aws/microsoft price dumping. In meanwhile, the openly accessible technology / know-how will be gone or hired by them and there will be no one left. Just look around, how many people you know that are capable of handling on-premise server? What about farm of servers without using any of google/aws/microsoft techn…
Depending on the nature of the business it can be cheaper to run own servers even for smaller companies. I see that in Norway quite a few places see that and the pool of qualified people to run them is not small.