I guess I’m spatially aware so I never bother with navigation, but given how many TomTom devices I see on dashboards these days others are. Well Google has a little announcement this morning which is not a huge surprise.
Today we’re excited to announce the next step for Google Maps for mobile: Google Maps Navigation (Beta) for Android 2.0 devices. This new feature comes with everything you’d expect to find in a GPS navigation system, like 3D views, turn-by-turn voice guidance and automatic rerouting. But unlike most navigation systems, Google Maps Navigation was built from the ground up to take advantage of your phone’s Internet connection.
And those words that every other company fears…
Like other Google Maps features, Navigation is free.
The Walmartization of technology continues. Why pay for anything if Google will eventually give it away free? Heck why invest any time working on anything since Google will just kill it later anyway. Verizon, welcome to the Google ecosystem. Don’t bother porting Verizon Navigator over to Android (though you probably already did and are wishing you didn’t about now)
Now there are two great limitations on this product. First it is only on Android which like the Microsoft Zune is irrelevant. Second it is only available in the USA which means that my friends around the world won’t be able to navigate to amusement parks that closed 25 years ago in their neighborhood.
So here comes Google ready to obliterate everything in its wake…
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Google’s announcement is just a logical step for Android — it has to have navigation and local context capabilities to compete.
The fact that Google understands how to achieve massive adoption is just normal business physics.
The “professional only” days of geospatial tech are well and truly finished. There are still important roles for geo-professionals, but not as gatekeepers for information or technology. We’re going to have to learn to live in an open-source and free world.
Amen, brother.
So you’ll be able to route to Legend City on an Android device now?Oops. Nevermind. I see you made that point. Somehow I completely missed that paragraph.
Yes, but don’t try and route to Dayton, OH.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=canton,+oh&sll=42.760558,-100.151676&sspn=45.729587,78.222656&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Canton,+Ohio&z=13
Really? How can Google even think about releasing a Navi product on these maps? I can hear the lawyers getting ready to sue for that sweet Google profits…
Need to get somewhere, use Bing Maps. It knows where Canton, OH is: http://www.bing.com/maps/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCP&cp=40.79781~-81.37157&style=r&lvl=11&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&phx=0&phy=0&phscl=1&where1=Canton%2C%20OH&encType=1
Here’s a reliability question: Google conflates their vector data to match their satellite imagery. How will they properly locate your position on conflated vector data if your cell GPS is accurate? Maybe they are hoping that people will report this as an error to be fixed or maybe they have a second copy of their vector data that is not conflated and can be used with a navi app.
Yes – there are some serious issues with Google Maps navigation feature.
I did a side-by-side comparison of Google Maps and Bing with several routes and Google picked some crazy routes – driving an hour out of the way in one case.
Bing Maps, on the other hand, nailed every one – even taking the “short-cuts” that I already knew about. Much, much, better navigation algorithm.
I like Google Maps, but I wouldn’t use it for navigation until they make some serious upgrades there.
Ah, thanks for bringing up this point. Overwhelming the market but with a mediocre product is a Microsoft way to go. Thought Google was above that.
Am I the only person who is a tad disconcerted by being routed by something that is in “Beta”? Yes, beta products for real world use, what could go wrong?
everything can be ‘in beta’ if people aren’t expected to pay for the privilege.
It’s an interesting study on what constitutes ‘good enough’ for most folks – clearly the folks on this list have higher standards than those that Google is aiming toward.
Bingo! And I wonder if Google factored in their users’ complacency.
I don’t see how it could be any worse than navigating with Garmin products. Hopefully it will force the commercial operations to improve their products.
This is going to be worse than the Garmin products since they license NAVTEQ Maps which are capable of producting TBT Navigation and Route Guidance.
Google’s own maps (I speculate) cannot provide this level of functionality nor accuracy yet.
This is what the whole Google Maps thread has been about.
Do you actually make a living in the mapping business?
James,
While your jibes at Google’s recent failings in hosting their own spatial data sets are humorous, I fear you’re missing the point here. Yes, Google’s giving the routing away for free, but that’s only because they’ve found a way to monetize it’s use. When your revenue stream benefits from ubiquity you can make more by giving the product away.
Wanna compete with google? Find a way to profit from the use of your product (advertisements is google’s model), capitalize on accessories (the ipod accessory industry is 1 billion/yr), build higher quality products (in dayton, ohio perhaps?) or personalize your products to specific industries or interests.
Information wants to be free. Find ways to profit from ubiquity or face obsolescence. Android may be irrelevant at the moment, but that too won’t last long when they are giving away their operating system for free.
So what you are saying is to compete with Google, you need to find a niche and hide. Sounds exactly like Walmart to me: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/102/open_snapper.html
Ah, they can give away their OS…
But they can’t give away their mobile devices! Thats the rub isn’t it?
And “Information wants to be free” as long as you have to access it with Google’s APIs.
> But they can’t give away their mobile devices!
Oh, but they can. There has been speculation about this for a long time now:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9028763/Report_Google_shows_phone_prototype_to_vendors
This, and Google WiFi:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_WiFi
http://blogs.computerworld.com/big_vote_fcc_approves_white_space_internet_broadband
Google stock, cheap at any price.
Find a niche and hide? Doesn’t sound like a sound business plan to me either.
Though niche is one possibility. And exactly how Snapper decided to market themselves in the Fast Company article you cite. Snapper looked at cheap lower quality products being offered and decided the only future for their company was high-priced, but higher quality products. There’s one niche that competes well with free (and google maps)
But there are others. One I example I mentioned was the ipod Accessories market. Despite the RIAA’s best lawyers you and I still get most of our music for free. Last.fm, mp3s – the bits fly freely despite lawsuits. A whole industry (artists plus reproduction) was destroyed by digital distribution. But that wasn’t the end of music. It was the end of that variant of the industry. It also created new industries. One of them, cheap plastic accessories for one method of listening to digital music is a 1 billion dollar/year industry. And that wasn’t the only new industry.
Continuing with digital music, the whole model of profitizing from music creation has been turned on its head. New models are emerging, just as they will for geodata (I’d argue your employer is a pioneer in this arena). If they succeed they’d be the iTunes of Spatial Data.
We who profit from geodata, processing and analysis also have to rethink how we profit in a world where the economics of scarcity no longer apply.
Here’s Chris Anderson’s (Wired Editor/Author) list of ten ways you can compete with free/nearly free to which I’ve added geopossibilities: * Immmediacy – mapping services * Personalization – custom cartography * Interpretation – web services that expose analysis tools (crop forecasting based on free satellite data) * Authenticity – established expertise * Open Accessibility – design for web mashups/reuse * Embodiment – live performance or physical good (high quality poster) * Patronage – true fans who support work often up front * Findability – Aggregators (amazon, google, bing, how about an aggregator for spatial metadata?) * Quality – Give away low resolution, charge for high quality 1 foot imagery service (or software) * Affiliation – Buy Local, Buy from those in your “community” virtual or real.
James thanks for all your hard work on this site and for the community. If I know what’s going on in the geoweb, it’s likely because you turned me on to it and generally I find your insights spot on. Thanks
Excellent list Brent! That is some seriously good stuff.
Great analysis Brent!
I like the iTune comparison. It’s made me want to see a technical comparison of the iPhone App Store, with Android Marketplace. Android claims to be “open”, and also support multiple apps running at the same time.
Will we need standards that allow Android geo-apps to interoperate with one another (and share the same map)?
The path generated by Google might not be the best for all users. As with Snapper, there are users willing to pay for specialized routing capabilities.
Let’s say I’m a manager responsible for a fleet of delivery trucks. The best route for my truck depends on the size, turning radius, etc. Google isn’t likely going to collect traffic flow data relevant to my fleet. Instead of using Google for routing I would pay for a specialized routing service and use an Android app that requests routes based on warehouses defined in a different layer – and managed by a different app.
Given Googles’ interest in transit, they are likely working on Demand Responsive Transit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_responsive_transport There might be some overlap with fleet management, but I think the niches it opens up will more than compensate.
I also wonder if Google has plans to leverage android handsets in a wireless mesh network like the one described by Zip car founder Robin Chase: http://www.ted.com/talks/robin_chase_on_zipcar_and_her_next_big_idea.html
Brent how is Google monetizing this? The way I see it you have no revenues and plenty of costs.
Revenue:
Navi app: none, it is free Android OS: none, it is free Reselling Google owned road content: when hell freezes over
Costs:
Cost of server hardware: amortized into the Google cloud with a shrug Bandwidth costs: not trivial but not too bad Programmer cost: not trivial QA/QC costs: not trivial Lawyer costs: amortized into the Google lawyer cloud Satellite imagery costs: non trivial (I’m surprised that Google doesn’t own a fleet of satellites in polar orbit, that is probably next)
So no revenue and a few costs. If Google preferentially filters their basemap with respect to who paid to be seen then they loose the usefulness of a map (which is to tell you what is there, not to tell you who paid to be seen by you). Pop up ads (with voice?!) are probably not a good idea in a navi device.
Google’s profit business model is simple. Make it easy for people to find things. Profit from the advertisements and customized higher-end products. Google has introduced advertising into gmaps and gearth. This will be the same model. Give away access, profit from it’s use. The more it’s used the more they profit. Remove all barriers to entry. Introduce many products with no idea how you will profit from them, but with the insight that new profit models will be emerge as the service receives widespread use.
Google also lets the crowd refine their software so they do not have to. For instance look at all the voice samples they are getting through Google Talk.
Google clearly marches to the beat of a different drummer. Seems to me they have tossed out all the books on how to make a profit. Brent is so right on. Old business models built on the economics of scarcity are doomed to failure in the new bit economy. If you want to make it in the new online economy you either have to be the definitive source of content, which can be found nowhere else or you have to build reusable distributed services that elegantly separate the signal (i.e. high quality, targeted content) from the noise (i.e. the plethora of content available online. Think Google or Facebook.
James, I am somewhat surprised by your position on this issue. There seems to have been a historical common thread on your blog about freeing data. How is this different? Google is providing the data and the free API to allow people like you to develop amazing applications. Why fight it? Get on board and run with it.
Sure the routing algorithm may not be that great. I’m sure Google is crowd sourcing the refinement of the algorithm. Think about it. Google Nav tell you to go one way and it should take 30 minutes. You go another way and it takes 20 minutes. If enough people have by pass a given area the algorithm learns. The wisdom of the crowd is a powerful thing.
I used to poo poo Google’s efforts a few years ago. I used to think ‘I’m a GIS professional, what Google is doing is not GIS it is childs play.’ That may be true at some levels, but the fact that I downloaded a GPS route from my bicycle computer, developed a Google Site from scratch, posted the GPS route as a KML the site, embedded a Google Earth view into my blog, and mashed up my KML file with Earth in a matter of an hour or so is astonishing. When I started in the GIS field 10 years ago publishing GIS over the web was the hot thing. Ten years latter I can rapidly implement a 3D viewer on the web for free. That is progress. To see my mash up travel to my outdoor blog and scroll to the bottom of the post: http://mtbmaven.vox.com/library/post/horseshoe-meadows-rd-mt-whitney-portal-climb.html
I pimped this book on this site before and I will do it again. “What Would Google Do?” by Jeff Jarvis. If you are interested in exploring the possibilities of where this all might go I encourage you read this book and listen to the weekly podcast This Week in Google hosted by Leo Laporte. I would not call myself a Google fanboy; I still have a Yahoo email account for goodness sake. I am impressed the possibilities of several of their initiatives recently.
I wouldn’t classify information locked up behind commercial APIs (free or not) as open.
The reason I can’t get on board with this is that they are using the monopolistic power to destroy competition. They are able to take losses on their geospatial endeavors because they make so much more money elsewhere.
I understand the world isn’t fair, but that doesn’t mean I have to like what they are doing. Any company that feels the need use “don’t be evil” as a motto must be doing shady things.
Is Google destroying competition or creating it elsewhere? Just because they are doing things differently does not mean they are necessarily destroying anything other than traditional ways of creating revenue.
Again either be an authoritative content creator/provider of content that is not easily commoditized, find a way of organizing disparate content into relevant information.
There is money to be made out there. People are coming up with game changing ideas all the time. There are bound to be mapping equivalents to Twitter or Facebook; especially as spatial content is being integrated into our daily lives more so than ever before.
I work for a municipal government, and while I may be proven wrong, we are the authority for much of the spatial content we produce. Few others have the means to create our zoning information for instance. Granted it’s public record but the means to produce information that has relatively little commercial value keeps us in business from a content creation stand point.
Google did not necessarily destroy the street network content business, the Census Bureau did with accurate and complete, public domain, TIGER data (we provided the Census with our street centerline data). The writing is clearly on the wall, if you are a content creator your days are numbered if your content can be found in the public domain or you are already so good at what you do that a company like Google wants to partner with you (e.g. GeoEye). Don’t hate the player hate the game (or better yet embrace the game).
“I work for a municipal government, and while I may be proven wrong, we are the authority for much of the spatial content we produce. Few others have the means to create our zoning information for instance. Granted it’s public record but the means to produce information that has relatively little commercial value keeps us in business from a content creation stand point.”
But you’re wrong there.
Few others have the ability to create your zoning information. They can certainly create zoning information and position it as more authoritative than yours (but include legal text absolving them of liability for any decisions made off the zoning data they provide). So, the question is, what, if anything, do you do when someone else decides to create their own version of your zoning information?
It seems that Verizon already knew about this since it’s going to be on their phone. I personally can’t wait, the stand alone GPS companies will have to find a way to compete and I’m sure they will. ArcGIS server is a much better product due to competition from Google.
BTW, all of the GPS units that I’ve used…Garmin, TomTom, Magellan, Prius, have given me some weird routing directions, it’s not unique to one company.
Excellent bomb video.
Clearly the Rooshins have infiltrated Google. Like Dr. Strangelove, we need to stop worrying and learn to love the Map – and make sure Android API geoskills is on our checklist.
Wow, congratulations on being “spatially aware.” All of us non “spatially aware” people have to rely on TomTom just to get to the corner store. Could you be anymore condescending?
I’ll agree with you that Google Maps is far from perfect but I would hope that this new offering would spur them on to correct these problem.
One small correction:
“First it is only on Android which like the Microsoft Zune is irrelevant.”
Partially right.
“For now, the app will only be available on the Droid, but in a press conference earlier this morning, Google also said that these navigation capabilities would eventually come to other phones, including the iPhone.” http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_maps_navigation_the_killer_app_for_android_2.php
James, Perhaps I have not read your reasons from earlier postings, but I sense a negative perspective on G-things that seems over the top. I’m writing this response on my Android phone, a G-1 running Donut (1.6). Earlier this week I had the pleasure of recording my GPS tracks on an 800-mile trip, and was able to post the tracks with speed statistics and a Z-profile graph on Google MyMaps while eating breakfast along the way. I record photos with geographic coordinates and azimuth-elevation tags and post them to Picasa with summary maps of photo and video XY clusters. I shoot grainy videos with poor sound and upload them to YouTube from a Starbucks hotspot. When I drill down in Google Maps, I can find myself in StreetView where the phone’s compass and accelerometer turns the view as I turn and tilt the phone. Indoors or at night I enjoy SkyMap that displays the upward hemisphere based on my location and time of day, plus phone azimuth and elevation. Finally, with the Layar browser, I can augment my world with a 3D-ish rendering of Google Local or other content superimposed on my phone’s live video feed. In that mode, I can tap a dot knowing how far away it is, which direction to turn to face it, and also phone the business, open their website, or yes, get directions. In that context I’m a bit indifferent to the directions that Google Maps may offer. An Android device with this level of integration among GPS, compass, accelerometers, camera, video, and cloud resources for maps, terrain, spatial data, and text, voice, and media messaging is an unparalleled spatial system. Consider taking a deep breath and looking again. This is an important part of the spatially enabled future. I think that you’re really going to like it!
For the others, the “Because It’s Not Google” (Bing) maps approach seems like it is a fine product for desktop systems operated by retail consumers. That’s a big market, and it often seems like it’s a big wold!
Darb:
Nothing “mainstream” you describe can’t be done on other mobile devices. I’m stuck on my organizations choice of Blackberry, but I can do much of the above.
And Picasa? Really?
If Google sucks at navigation, and they suck at it long enough, the hundreds of millions of consumer-market users will tell them so very plainly by staying away in droves.
BUT, if they assimilate their crowdsourcing fast enough, and people stay sticky to the site because it’s good enough and gets better, and it’s as easy to use and ubiquitous as the rest of the successful efforts (yes, some things have failed over there) then the market will respond accordingly.
We of the geocognoscenti can bloviate all we want – but at the end of the day we’re irrelevant when compared to the will of the crowds.
I refer us all to the opening of this thread from Mr. Sonnen
The market is biased because Google is giving away free services where other (mortal) companies charge customers. The PND market is now a question of screen size and if you want to pay a $100 premium for a screen larger than what Google gives you for free.
There is no competition here- there is only extermination. You know the way MS exterminated Netscape with IE 4-5 by eating browser development costs to bundle the browser for free with the OS.
And yet, I feel I must point out that MapQuest is still alive and kicking.
Think about that.
Grok this from April 2009 – http://weblogs.hitwise.com/heather-dougherty/2009/04/google_maps_surpasses_mapquest.html
Wonder where we are now?
Mapquest lives on through their early-to-market business share. They are suffering under the strain, no doubt, and are likely to hold share while Google walks around them and converts and builds new customers…
I wonder who is providing the navigation.
Personally, I have found Google maps to be at par with Mapquest… And giving about the same quality of directions (aka getting you completely lost). My honest solution is just going to RandMcNally.com. They are cartographers and been doing so for years! They give pretty sound drections (when I follow them) and those Sac-Nav systems seem to be more of a distraction then they are worth. My father has a Tom-tom (he got for a gift because his name is “Tom”) and he tells the dumb thing to be quiet more then he actually follows the directions.
Just stick with Randmcnally.com that’s my suggestion.
Jennifer, Rand McNally uses NAVTEQ for their underlying dataset. The same one used by Garmin, Magellan, Yahoo! Maps, Bing Maps, MapQuest, XM/Sirius Satellite, BMW, Honda/Acura and many more: http://corporate.navteq.com/findus.html
The same data can give different routes. It boils down to the routing algorithm and whether or not a company has built extra assumptions into their data (e.g. strongly prefer freeways).
googly schmoogly
google’s is mapping streets navteq is mapping streets state dots are mapping streets counties are mapping streets cities are mapping streets i’m mapping streets the crowd is mapping streets
google’s building aps off street data navteq is building aps off street data state dots are building aps off street data counties are building aps off street data cities are building aps off street data im not smart enough to build aps off street data but i want to the crowd is building aps off street data
seems like the feds are missing in the mix. liberate the streets. go google go, go navteq go, go everyone go, but maybe you should talk about ways to reduce redundancy. seems like the feds are missing in the mix.
The feds are responding by setting up a Department of Redundancy Department.
They already did; OMB set one up twenty years ago – it’s called the Federal Geographic Data Committee. You can find them here http://www.fgdc.gov/
The true test will be whether or not Google can maintain the data. That is where NAVTEQ and TeleAtlas spend the majority of their time and money. Google will probably try to get the crowd to do the job for them. I doubt that will happen to the depth and breadth they expect or need.
They have great technology, but have yet to prove they are credible cartographers (most of the data is provided by using TIGER files).
We are preaching to the choir here as the public will be the ultimate judges of whether or not the product will be good enough.
I for one don’t plan to provide any free updates until they release the data into the public domain. As for providing a map update to NAVTEQ and TeleAtlas, I have done so in the past and will continue to do so in the future.
Why the different stance? Because Google will use their monopolistic powers to crush the competition (NT and TA) and then will become a monopoly. Then where will you go for data?
Good comments, I think it will be interesting with all the budget cuts in 2009-2010 and cities and counties getting cuts to see whom will be updating data at the rate they have in the past. Will google step up to the plate and contribute to sustainability of critical data.
While there are data quality issues, and routing algorithm issues. Who caught this session? http://proceedings.esri.com/library/userconf/proc09/uc/abstracts/a1870.html
I did… and the abstract paints a rosier picture than what was presented. These results were under ideal conditions with high satellite, known hotspot availability, and stationary or walking platforms – A-GPS and Wifi locating get much fuzzier than 600m when you start dropping in incorrect wifi locations, high speeds, or low satellite availability). 600m is an awful long ways to be off when you are doing navigating.
Interesting paper but I do not think the lay public cares or even notices. It is a matter of convenience versus quality. Sure I would love to listen to an HD recording with $10,000 speakers in an acoustically engineered room but I can’t take that with me on the Metro or on a bike ride. I can take a 192 bit encrypted MP3 file and listen to it with $20 headphones. Sure the quality may not be as good but the convenience outweighs the disadvantages. The same is true for GPS and routing.
The convenience of having navigation built right into my phone for free outweighs the face that it may not route me the absolute best way.
I will point out one significant hole in my argument. Remember the family who die a few years ago when they were trapped on a small road in rural Oregon? He was on the old Screen Savers show or TechTV/G4 at the least. They attributed the family being lost due to the route provided by the GPS in their vehicle, which routed them on a road well know in the area for being unsafe for winter travel. At the end of the day you can’t rely on technology to make all your decisions, be it a high zoot Tom Tom with NavTeq data or a free app on an Andriod phone.
Wow, great thread with some really thought-provoking stuff.
Part of Google’s success is simply its massive brand awareness. Their success with web mapping is not necessarily based on the quality of their products, but on their easy availability and ease of use (which is of course a different but important kind of quality). Either way, everybody’s heard of Google, so they easily remember Google Maps (hey, it’s like, “Google” with “Maps”….), and most of the tools work well enough most of the time for most people’s purposes.
Microsoft’s web mapping tools are arguably better than Google’s, but who even knows about them out in the real world? I never did figure out what they were called before they got Binged (Live Earth? Virtual Earth? Live Search?…). Meanwhile, Google is racing ahead with all its permanent-beta tools and APIs and mobile platforms etc and has that all important “cool” buzz to keep attention focused on its products/services. And a lot of their stuff really is “cool” to some of us nerds…:-)
As for the data quality/openness issue, I dunno. AFAIK, nobody else has found a commercially viable way to make high quality spatial data genuinely free and open, except for governments whose data is paid for by the taxpayer in the first place. So it may be that access to high quality spatial data will continue to be restricted, one way or another, to those who can afford to produce/consume it
Which is pretty much where we were before Google came along, isn’t it?
Android as irrelevant as Zune? Funny how things can change in two months.
Just because TechCrunch says it is relevant doesn’t make it so.
Androids I’ve ever seen in person = 0 Zune’s I’ve ever seen in person = 0 iPhones I’ve seen in person = thousands
‘nuf said…
A late post, but maybe someone will notice.
Android is moving toward another commodity revolution… the sheer number of new phones running Android just keeps increasing. I use one – the hilariously “spatially aware” Samsung Moment. Now, just as an aside, this phone is running Android 1.5 on a CDMA network, which is not a comfortable marriage: if I turn off the GPS and use cell-tower location, it puts me in Lithuania (rather than Toledo, OH).
But the key point is that when using Google Maps for Android (not Google Nav, which I presume includes a similar EULA), you must agree to allow Google to track your location. I am quit confident that Google does not particularly care where I am, except to (a) enable their Latitude service and (b) have me automatically verify the correlation between (i) my phone’s GPS, (ii) their vectors, and (iii) their rasters. (b) is by far the most important application.
If they provide service to enough Android units – and they will, for most people, most of the time, except when it really matters – their directions and maps will automatically update given a certain confidence threshold. They will know not only where the centerlines and edges are, the shape of each interchange, but also gain reliable real-time congestion maps and the ability to provide routing in consideration of current conditions.
Android was never as irrelevant as Zune. That’s a very, very low standard. My fear with crowdsourcing is that it is exactly the situations in which you really need an external reference – because there’s no one local to directly ask – that the crowd/cloud fails. Not too many people go that way? You’re on your own. Good luck… now that you’re used to high-quality real-time spatial info.
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[...] they drop TeleAtlas too early So I want to follow up on the nuclear bomb dropped on the geospatial industry – but instead I want to focus on what James pointed out [...]