Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and TomTom join forces to take on Google and Apple Maps

The companies are collaborating to release free map data for developers.

6 comments

And what are they planning to do with it? Because there's no such coming thing as an altruistic act by companies, and those all have a long track record of fucking people over
- They are definately looking to make money off of it: https://www.feedough.com/how-google-maps-works-makes-money/
  
  Advertising
  
  Selling APIs
  
  Partnering with other Companies
  
  and, of course, data mining
- They can give away the data with the only intent being market share.
Yeah, if they're feeling altruistic, I have to wonder why they aren't just continuing to openstreetmaps.
- The piece mentions drawing on open source data, which may include OSM.
TIL TomTom still exists.

If they want to make data free, why not just add it to OSM?

6 comments