I've always thought that the real money in mobile comes from very accurate map data, and very accurate personal position data. that way when you're walking around town, you can 'ask' your phone for directions to eat/shop/whatever, and it can give you a great recommendation ( for a price to local restaurants ). I asked Eric Schmidt if this was a powerful motivator behind the android acquisition, as at the time it seemed like a natural fit, and surprisingly he did not say no. And yes I know that Android was bought 'on a whim, gut instinct' but this is the perfect use case for it.
How Google Builds Its Maps
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Re: How Google Builds Its Maps
#12Google are only a small part of the spatial data capture world. They provide amazing access to a few datasets and completely ignore others. Location searches are laughably bad unless you are looking for a hotel. They do not even come close to providing comprehensive topographic mapping.
Re: How Google Builds Its Maps
#13A lot of people under estimate the investment Google has made in their maps product. That we've got two companies doing that (Apple and Google) is a bit mind boggling.
So, Nokia and Microsoft just do not exist in the mapping space?
Re: How Google Builds Its Maps
#14I work for a company in the telecommunications space. We've talked to several car companies about integrating 4g into their on board computers. I'm really excited for this update. I suppose I haven't really noticed how much better navigation has improved until a few weeks ago. Recently I purchased an 09 infiniti with full tech package. The thing that took me back, was how terrible the navigation system has been inside of Boston (a very complex area). I can't remember the last time Google maps has told me something wrong, but this stale nav system consistently get's confused about 1 way streets etc.
What i'd LOVE to see is for Nissan to throw away its custom OS, and replace it with Android... along with that I want google maps (instead of whatever Nissan is licensing). Plus it would be nice to download apps for my car such as a better mileage tracker etc.
Re: How Google Builds Its Maps
#15Google are only a small part of the spatial data capture world. They provide amazing access to a few datasets and completely ignore others. Location searches are laughably bad unless you are looking for a hotel. They do not even come close to providing comprehensive topographic mapping.
I think that traditional topographic mapping is not very useful from a business standpoint. When there are more, or a critical number of the autonomous vehicles from Google deployed in the wild, I fully expect very high resolution 3D maps from all the LIDAR and other data. That will be incredibly cool.
Re: How Google Builds Its Maps
#16I've always thought that the real money in mobile comes from very accurate map data, and very accurate personal position data. that way when you're walking around town, you can 'ask' your phone for directions to eat/shop/whatever, and it can give you a great recommendation ( for a price to local restaurants ). I asked Eric Schmidt if this was a powerful motivator behind the android acquisition, as at the time it seem…
This idea is just picking at low hanging fruit. It is like saying that the killer app of the web is retail shopping. Sure Amazon is cool, but the web is so much more than that. Perhaps "location" will be like the web and have millions of little niches. IMHO it won't really take off until you have higher smart phone penetration in the developing world. These kind of apps need a market with lots of pedestrians, not car bound America.
Re: How Google Builds Its Maps
#17After reading this article, I realize now that Watson was this cute thing IBM was working on that they thought was novel, while Google was building machines that think, collaborate and formulate, period. They don't just answer questions: they take data and turn it into something we know how to breeze through.
I am truly astounded by how quickly we are accelerating through this information era.
Re: How Google Builds Its Maps
#18A lot of people under estimate the investment Google has made in their maps product. That we've got two companies doing that (Apple and Google) is a bit mind boggling.
It's not Apple doing it, it's http://www.openstreetmap.org/ .
Actually Apple does have a big part in it. They bring together all the data from Tom Tom, Waze, OSM etc as well as the two teams they purchased: C3 and Placebase into one coherent product.
It's amazing that Apple has nearly matched Google in some parts (maps, directions) and far exceeded them in others (3D).
Re: How Google Builds Its Maps
#19Google are only a small part of the spatial data capture world. They provide amazing access to a few datasets and completely ignore others. Location searches are laughably bad unless you are looking for a hotel. They do not even come close to providing comprehensive topographic mapping.
I think that traditional topographic mapping is not very useful from a business standpoint. When there are more, or a critical number of the autonomous vehicles from Google deployed in the wild, I fully expect very high resolution 3D maps from all the LIDAR and other data. That will be incredibly cool.
Traditional topographic mapping is still hugely useful in many niches. Try laying a 100 mile pipeline, or building a factory, or organising search and rescue without traditional topo mapping. I would agree that it can be obtusely formatted and wildly expensive.
High resolution 3D modelling is already available in much of Norther Europe. It is very cool, but surprisingly difficult to actually make useful. In most applications comic book style generalisations actually work better.
Re: How Google Builds Its Maps
#20A lot of people under estimate the investment Google has made in their maps product. That we've got two companies doing that (Apple and Google) is a bit mind boggling.
So, Nokia and Microsoft just do not exist in the mapping space?
Well mentioned. Nokia has been far ahead of the curve for turn by turn navigation and Bing's aerial view has almost always surpassed Google.
It will be interesting to see if Microsoft's amazing augmented reality research will end up in a mapping product some day soon as well.