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Comment by cs702 | Hacker News Reader

Wow. The parties that will ultimately suffer most from this are Navteq and TomTom, which now charge between one and two orders of magnitude more than Google for map data.

For car makers seeking to add built-in navigation to their vehicles, Google Maps is now a much more compelling choice than either of those two companies' offerings.

(FWIW, TomTom is reportedly Apple's supplier of map data.)

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They aren't doing this because they want to hurt TomTom & Navteq. They are doing this because they are suffering from OpenStreetMap, who charges many orders of magnitude less than Google Maps even with this price drop.

Many orders of magnitude? What are they charging? 1 cent per 1 million maps?

OpenStreetMaps is free but you've to host it yourself.

There are several free OSM tile servers too, so you don't even need to host yourself. MapQuest's is probably the most generous: you can use it completely free, even in paid apps and webapps. They just request that you let them know in advance if you plan to distribute an app where you anticipate very high usage (currently defined as >4,000 tiles/second). http://developer.mapquest.com/web/products/open/map

Wow, didn't know that, thanks!

Just looked it up and realized that MapQuest went on board with OpenStreetMap back in 2010. I never knew that, props to MapQuest!

The problem with open street maps is that it so much worse than google maps. Orders of magnitude worse. I love the concept and in theory that concept is unbeatable (who else but those living in the area have the most intricate knowledge of roads, paths, etc?). But as of now, it is simply not comparable. Many features missing, and the data is very incomplete (many streets missing, missing buildings and street numbers, parks, POIs, ...).

But there are also plenty of applications where Google's higher quality doesn't offer a significant advantage.

At my last job I started to negotiate with Google about their (old) new maps pricing. They kept pointing to features that made no difference for our application. We needed Ok maps and decent forward and reverse geocoding. We were in their free tier, but needeed to find a solution for when we outgrew it, because their pricing was way way too high for our business model.

I left that company, bust if nothing else, this new pricing will further delay the day that they consider replacing Google maps. For new projects though, I'd probably skip google maps altogether, or at least use them in such a way that the client-side code would be totally provider independent.

In some areas. In some areas OSM is way better than Google Maps.

Google Maps is relatively consistent level of quality across a country (some countries are much better mapped than others in GM), whereas in OSM one part of a city might be well mapped, and another part poorly mapped.

OSM better than GM:

Sarajevo: http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/?mt0=mapnik&mt1=googlemap&#... POIs within Dublin: http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/?mt0=mapnik&mt1=googlemap&#...

Yes, I know there are areas/countries which are poorly mapped in Google Maps (as your example of Srajevo clearly shows). But generally I've found OSM much worse than Google Maps.

Regarding Dublin - your link has missing POI info, don't know why. Here's a screenshot directly from google maps page: http://cl.ly/1H2r0X2I1U2O3F0j0X2U

You can add the missing items or fix those that are incorrect. Best to start in your own neighborhood. Give it a try, i did.

But OSM can get better, and better faster. I toyed with it just a bit and fixed a few things myself. Google maps? I filed a bug or two, then two years later they closed it as not applicable.

Google offers map maker (http://www.google.com/mapmaker) in many countries, so you can modify existing maps or add new data.

With a sufficient critical mass now in or transitioning to OSM, it's trivial that OSM will get better. If Apple are going to contribute to OSM(which is likely based on their shared project history) then it's expected to increase in quality quickly.

However, even without their contribution, OSM is already at a level of maturity to compete with the bulk of GM implementations. It seems that most people just need basic location services.

I find Google (much) better at address lookup and searching for commercial establishments, but most of the places I've lived/visited have better OSM data in a number of other ways. Google is particularly bad if you're a pedestrian: it seems to be missing a lot of non-auto paths, especially things like urban staircases in hilly cities.

Google (much) better at address lookup

There are 2 problems here: (a) OSM's doesn't have as much house numbering data (that'll improve with time) and (b) addressing → lat/long is pretty freaking hard. If you limit yourself to one country and one address system, it's much easier. Otherwise things get messy fast.

>The parties that will ultimately suffer most from this are Navteq and TomTom

Their time is coming up because these companies cannot update at the same pace as the rest of the world. It just costs too much. In many ways, this is similar to why Webkit will dominate as well.

> Their time is coming up because these companies cannot update at the same pace as the rest of the world. It just costs too much. In many ways, this is similar to why Webkit will dominate as well.

Yes, it's exactly like how Windows dominates mobile. Other companies cannot update at the same pace and it just costs too much.

These trends are so easy to follow I wonder why anyone bothers to form their own company or build their own technology.

Oh wait, that's not true is it.

OS development is not the same thing nor are many other categories. There are too many other things at play. This isn't a hard and fast rule that's applicable to everything.

Mapping is different in the sense that it's primary usefulness comes from being accurate and constantly updated. The best way to do this is from crowd-sourced data. As good as Google Maps is, it still has a hard time keeping current.

I mention Webkit in the same post because one of the most fundamental features of any browser is for a site to be rendered correctly. We've seen the worst of this before with IE and ActiveX

Not reportedly: http://corporate.tomtom.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=6820... (Apple-style concise, I guess)

And, reportedly :-), _one_of_the supplierS.

TomTom is reportedly Apple's supplier of map data

Apple get some of their data from OpenStreetMap.

I guess for places where Navtek does not have coverage (similarly to how Google did expand coverage with mapmaker in Africa).

Apple were using OSM in european capital cities aswell…

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