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Comment by bhhaskin | Hacker News Reader

Here is the problem. When Google first launched Maps it was free and they ran all of the other competition out of business. Now that all their competition are dead they want to charge for it. If that doesn't scream antitrust I don't know what else does. Google has grown maps using pretty shady tactics. Their data is only so good due to mining data from all the Android users and I bet Street View has a lot of government money behind it.

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A couple of years ago in my home country, in Eastern Europe, we had a startup focused on street view imagery. They managed to go through all the major cities and roads and had way better data than google and more coverage. They also started expanding in other countries in the region, going from Austria to Poland. There was a catch, they were more expensive and you couldn’t use their services for free, because they actually needed to make money. The moment Google came in and added street view for this Area of Europe, and even though their product had better images than Google, they went out of business, because nobody used their service any more.

> When Google first launched Maps it was free and they ran all of the other competition out of business. Now that all their competition are dead they want to charge for it.

Were there any significant competing maps APIs for the web in 2005? There may have been (and you seem so certain I'm sure you could name them all :P), but it's crazy to claim that there aren't far more competitors in the last 5 years than there were back then. Just look at the article, which is literally about all the competition available.

Nokia maps was pretty decent. They had acquired Navteq, which had been in the business of mapping for decades. When Google maps just used to have a list of driving instructions, Nokia maps had full turn by turn voice navigation. Of course in this case Google maps didn't drive Nokia out of business, that was totally their own doing and maps was just one collateral damage.

Nokia Maps wasn't collateral damage. It is still very much alive and kicking. Nokia rebranded Nokia Maps as Here and and eventually sold it off. Here is still very much alive. Employees several thousand and is still a major player in the mapping services business.

> Were there any significant competing maps APIs for the web in 2005?

Don't forget about services beyond providing Maps APIs. Google Maps basically killed the need for a standalone GPS purchase (Garmin/TomTom) as well as purchasing upgraded maps for existing GPS systems, including those built into a car.

Am I complaining? No, but Google gave away for free something that once would've been hundreds of dollars in software. I'm surprised TomTom and Garmin weren't put out of business yet from it, but they survived on their niche products.

Everyone is responding about non-APIs. GP was specifically talking about running competitors "out of business" and then raising prices on the maps API. Google Maps itself certainly hasn't become a paid app, so I'm not sure what point folks are trying to make.

Certainly in the UK, online maps were dominated by two independent companies - Multimap and Streetmap - which were pretty much wiped out by Google. Multimap sold to Microsoft while Streetmap limps on, its UI barely changed.

Doesn't every tech company pretty much start free then start charging once they get all the users?

Maybe if they're VC-backed…

Vimeo has pretty much always had a shockingly* high price for their slightly-better plans, since they insist on covering their costs from subscriptions from the get-go. I'd be pretty confident they wouldn't bait-and-switch to grab some more cash (not the least since they're not the dominant video hosting provider). They compete on service and stability.

[*: in comparison to the other popular video hosting sites]

What was the competition that was run out of business?

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