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 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,"
I disagree with the competition is always good. There are many cases where you are duplicating work. The best standard rarely wins (PCI vs MCA .. MCA was superior in many ways technologically .. was even hot pluggable, but PCI had better licensing).
We get into a lot of repetition and the 'best' product rarely wins. It's more about marketing your product in a way people desire it. Example: Beats Audio Headphones.
Monocultures are dangerous too.
People differ on what to measure and how. Competition gives us an opportunity to try something new and potentially better. Especially when there isn't a network effect (e.g. phone protocols).
Also, the cost of this mapping apparently isn't especially high.
https://trademarks.justia.com/860/91/mapzen-86091461.html
> Mapzen is an open and accessible mapping platform...Based out of the Samsung Accelerator, we support the geo community through building tools and collaborating on open source mapping projects. We believe that a healthy mapping ecosystem is one that is diverse, sustainable, and accessible to all.
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.
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?
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.
Would you invest your retirement savings into a company that plans to return no profit by mapping the world and releasing the data for free?
I thought so.
I've worked on OSM, AFAIK I've got nothing back from having done so other than learning a little about maps.
Your position is flawed, because you're focussing on a single element of a social system. If I invest in mapping, it doesn't remove resources, it improves them for everyone. Without the waste of resources of solely profit-driven activity then we have ample resources to meet basic needs and develop technologically too.
No, I don't yet know how such a system can work. I've been working on it ... transition is the biggest problem and the one I've been addressing. At some point I hope it will benefit us all as a species - probably at a financial loss to me and many others.
We're not talking about a bunch of people pitching in some time as they feel about doing it, we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars (probably more) spent on this.
But, as you wouldn't invest your retirement funds in such a company, why would you expect others to do so?
We, humans, currently spend the resources on those things through the medium of fiat currency. Remove the necessity for profit, the need to pay a lot of people in that system incredibly more than they require - take a couple of dozen 8-figure mansions, a few 9-figure yachts, several hundred 6-figure cars, gold-plated taps, diamond-encrusted tiaras, etc., etc., and the resources targeted at the problem of producing maps go much further. And there's no reason not to have a competitive element, you don't need profit to create competition.
It's not spending people's retirement, it's spending the same resources we spend now, just not mediated in the same manner and without the waste of 40% spend on advertising (plucked that number out my ass but a few years ago pharma was spending more on advertising than on R&D) and without allowing controlling elements to steal all the output for personal gain.
So, I'd like to spend the equivalent resources we do now, but with saving on profit, over-paying wages, and de-duplication of effort. That gives much more resources applied to the actual task without touching pensions (which of course I'd like to see have the same effect).
The problem, is that moving to such an economic system requires the most greedy, most powerful, to be usurped. Humans are greedy (myself included), that leads us to waste so, so, much of our resources.
Why do you think a system where people choose the collective good (having all their needs met) - "volunteering" - rather than personal financial gain can't produce satellites, or any other good/technology we now produce?
No. You're missing the point:
> And there's no reason not to have a competitive element, you don't need profit to create competition.
This is where you're getting things wrong. We need competition to advance. Resources are limited and we compete for those resources. Competition is a resource-allocation system.
Sure, you can advocate for a centrally-planned pipe dream as much as you want, it doesn't work. It has been tried many times before, to horrendous results every single time.
> Why do you think a system where people choose the collective good (having all their needs met) - "volunteering" - rather than personal financial gain can't produce satellites, or any other good/technology we now produce?
For the same reason that unicorns can't fly: they can't even exist.
If you had a single company, you wouldn't have 10 teams doing the exact same job. The competition here isn't fruitful because so much of the work is shared. Competition is more effective when there is a diversity of approaches.
Think about how mapping was done before Google. Competition is exactly why we have Google Maps, and why Google Maps is continuously improving, instead of just sitting on its advantage.
Not only competition here has been extremely fruitful, it has made maps freely available to consumers.
Do you remember how much the TomTom app used to cost?
I'm glad that Nvidia and AMD compete to build better graphics chips, I'm also very glad they both work with a shared, cooperative standard (PCI-E) so I can plug them into my computer. They've chosen to compete on some areas and cooperate in others.
The parents are suggesting, hey, wouldn't it be nice if _everyone_ contributed data to OSM, and then competed on providing the best interface on top of that, rather than constructing data moats. Is it realistic that Google would do this? Of course not. But if 10 companies are all constructing their own data completely independently, that's an awful lot of duplicated work that could be avoided.
Data is the interesting part. And it needs more investment. Data is the valuable part. UX has very little relevance here.
Companies are competing on what matters and what gives them a competitive edge. Map UX doesn't. Map data does.
And who would do that?
Coke and Pepsi have been around for a long time, despite sharing the same set of ingredients that any other soda maker can use. Their value comes from marketing and distribution systems.
By stating "collaborate on X so that we can focus or compete on Y" merely adds one more turtle to to the the stack. You need to take a step back and ask these sorts of questions:
Does competition solve any problems that cooperation does not, or solve them better?
Do problems arise in competition that would not under cooperation?
Is there a 3rd alternative?
What about competition that pursues what's best for everyone, even if it is worse for the individual company pursuing it? (arguably not possible when corporate officers have a fiduciary responsibility to act in the best interest of the company, which presents a conflict)
Railroads should compete on service, quality and price. They should not compete by laying down parallel tracks side by side.
Some things should be shared in common and competitive services built on top.
Only when the existence of one incumbent inhibits the entrance of new ones, like physical infrastructure and natural monopolies.
As you can see, there is an abundance of mapping services. So yeah, competition is working great here.
Same as me.
In situations where most of the cost to set up a business is upfront, the marginal cost is very low and you can't "move" the immobilized capital after (like power lines, train lines, water main, fiber optic networks), there is a massive advantage to the first entrant (the "incumbent").
In these cases, there are massive barriers for new entrants: any new entrant would have to make an immense investment with zero chance of making it back, as the incumbent could just retaliate by lowering prices and driving the entrant out of business.
This situation means that there is little chance that competition will happen, so it is the best interest of society to mandate the operation of the infrastructure from the service. That's what happens with local-loop unbundling, or when the ownership and operation of the rail infrastructure must be separate from the ownership and operation of train lines and services.
That is not the case with mapping the world: anyone can do it, and having an incumbent doesn't block new entrants. There were already many incumbents when Google entered the mapping business, and there's still plenty of competition.
Therefore, there is no reason to mandate separation.
So no, it isn't "100% just your opinion".
But I appreciate the Lebowski reference :)
We've made much use of:
- http://www.openstreetmap.org/
And founded efforts like:
When specific about the type of data there is a lot less competition than you might expect. And for commercial companies it makes sense to make as much money as possible front that.