TomTom’s new mapping platform and ecosystem
tomtom.com
tomtom.com
I guess that product is a prime example for becoming irrelevant by society progressing. I actually still use an old TomTom in my old car that doesn't have a screen (well, it does, but didn't come with a GPS built in - adding it after the fact would have been around 1000£), since I don't have a smart phone. But it has been years since I updated the maps, probably wouldn't even be supported any more?!
That was probably the most interesting part of the whole comment!
I used to pick up and deliver lease cars from/to customers, and I'll never forget the Audi which had navigation, but no screen! There was a two line text display, which would show textual directions. It was an interesting experience!
My dad's early-2000s Peugeot 407 also had a similar set-up: a red/orange monochrome dot-matrix display, with a surprisingly hot backlight, capable of displaying only the most rudiminary of roundabout diagrams and now-and-next directions. It did use TTS to pronounce street names with the wrong inflection and an overemphasis on "yAAARds" as units-of-distance for some reason. It was controlled by an easy-to-lose infrared remote-control D-pad: entering an address meant picking each letter one-by-one from an A-Z list until it could autocomplete the street name.
I was always envious of kids whose parents had contemporaneous Mercedes with their full-color 3-4" LCD screens - until they'd told me of how bad UX was across the board: stuff like sub-usable frame-rates, overpriced map-data updates, etc - and this never got better over time until Tesla showed-up with 17" full-screen 60fps Google satellite imagery right there. And still the rest of the car industry doesn't "get" good UX. Le sigh.
(Yes, I drive a Model X and I'll decide the next car I buy squarely on the car's software UX - because if they can't get something as simple as smooth framerates right then what else are they getting wrong in the car?)
> And still the rest of the car industry doesn't "get" good UX. Le sigh.
Imho, a giant 17" touchscreen that replaces most physical controls in a car is also not good UX for a car. Why do you need high-res satellite imagery of your route on a screen in the center of the car? Just look out the window!
I'll grant that most other manufacturers also do a poor job of a lot of the UX elements, but Tesla ain't the great saviour either.
It is, because a lot of car-makers intentionally make the phone physically inaccessible by being out-of-reach when plugged in for CarPlay/AndroidAuto (they don't want to be complicit in texting-while-driving deaths - would you?). Most societies agree it's okay to use a large touch-screen keyboard thats part of the dashboard because (at least it's meant to be) positioned such that your eyes can still see the road ahead to some degree, and big chunky virtual keys go a long way too.
...telling me to fumble around for my iPhone, then somehow unlock it, get to the right app, then precisely poke its tiiiiny keyboard keys and hope autocorrect doesn't get it wrong (and it will) just to enter a new navigation address when I'm trying to negotiate traffic is a bad idea.
…but that doesn’t mean my last car’s abysmal “Ford MyTouch” or “Ford Sync” or whatever they rebrand it’s as was ever fit-for-purpose. How can a UI that can’t render faster than ~5fps be considered acceptable by the world’s leading carmaker? Where is the pride in their work?
You speak as though this is something new. It isn't. It was the same story back with Apple's iPod's clickwheel-and-drilldown UX. Nothing was stopping Apple's competitors from innovating on their own and potentially making something superior (and I was particularly fond of the contemporaneous UI of MS's PocketPC 2000's Media Player[1]). But they didn't. Instead everyone: Creative, Dell[2], Rio/iRiver, everyone just kept on putting out unusable plastic flash players that took 30 minutes to sync 10 minutes of 32kbps mono MP3 over COM1 or bulky HDD players unusuable to everyone except those people with ponytails who run that strange new "Linux" operating system I've been hearing so much about.
And before that, it was probably Braun vs. Philips.
For noncoherent reasons that I can't string together into a readable paragraph (I wasted over 10 minutes trying to already) I'll just say I think it's inevitable that in any consumer industry there will eventually be only one company with a monopoly on good taste and good design. Also consider how companies will hire people who are already aligned with the company's values, and we know Apple hires people with an eye for design regardless of their role, but Apple's competitors never had an eye for design, so they neve hired people with an eye for design, so they're never able to compete with Apple on the design front. Upstart competitors might be formed with an objective to wrest-away Apple's monopoly on good design but (post-1997) how could any design-focused small-fry compete with Apple on design? They can't. They'd ever get bought-out before they become too big to become a threat (if Apple's feeling nice), or end-up as another also-ran Android vendor with a nice handset, but you're still stuck with Google, and without the leverage of Samsung.
I don't know where I'm going with this post now, so I'll just end it here.
[1] Rightmost screenshot: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/KMKZKDjJzWY/maxresdefault.jpg
Because it’s incredibly useful.
It means you can navigate dirt tracks. See over treeelines. Judge the quality of parking lots. Find out what side of the building the driveway or entrance is on. Etc.
holup. what do you mean? like you don't own one or don't use one?
Surprisingly, I seem to be able to go through life just fine, so don't worry.
How do you find your way out of the house in the morning? And what do you do when you're stuck somewhere with other people who you don't know?
Even worse, what do you do when you are passing by someone you barely know and don't want to exchange pleasantries?
How do you even poop?
There's still the use case of driving in remote areas with less-than-ideal or expensive connectivity (though probably those spots don't really require sophisticated nav), and also that you might not want to tell ad monopolies your location data.
I like having OSM sometimes for, like, figuring out parking and trails in parks, but I've never succeeded using it to get directions on roads.
Any time I'm driving somewhere reasonably far (or where I know there's no service), I'll download or update the maps. Never had an issue.
But I've seen another uses of dedicated GPS appliances: bikers. They use rugged ones, they don't break so easily as phones.
I'm of an era where my first TomTom was an external GPS receiver that connected to a PDA (Palm Pilot?) via Bluetooth, with all manner of cradles, wires and such. The GPS receiver needed to be re-paired each time I made a journey.
I think the cloud based gps on phones won for being free and having traffic info.
My Tom Tom had the “mr T” celebrity voice yelling directions at me. A friend had John Clease. This is before gps directions told you street names, but with ai I think they could manage this again.
I think those older GPS chips might only use the US-operated GPS system while modern ones can consider other positioning satellites as well. And they also can't download AGPS data of satellite drift from the internet, so they need to get it from the satellites themselves.
Good trick to remember I suppose.
Or non-absolute quantities like temperature in Fahrenheit/Celsius. (You can use Kelvin instead, but good luck interpreting that plot)
The last time i checked in about 2007 the price of a yearly UK update was eye watering. I just accepted that if i take the new by-pass Tom will scream thinking im in a lake.
I've also seen it as a default navigation provider in many car brands so I find your bubble biased post pretty funny - and kinda sad, because we see a lot of those here these days. Is it really so hard to stop for a second and think whether there might be people out there that don't share your preferences?
And it has a lifetime subscription to traffic updates with a built-in SIM card that works internationally as well. Drove with it across Europe several times and it's still the best satnav you could have.
Since Covid, I don't go anywhere consistently enough for it to know what to suggest :)
This is what led to their demise, no?
We need a new alternative word for "free" when it comes to advertising companies. Something short to say "the cost is too abstract and indirect to understand fully or describe, but does impact society at large". Maybe "free-ish"?
Nothing is truly free as people commonly conceptualizer it in their mind. Just alone receiving something at all comes with strings, even if they are not apparent. There is a term that describes this issue rather well in German, “vogelfrei”. It refers to being as free as a bird, which is assumed to be a great thing, but it also means you are free to be hunted and predated.
Free is also the theme of a deal with the devil. I will self-censor here a bit about what is the devil, because the devil’s censorship is more consequential than if I do it to myself for the time being.
I don’t think this is an accurate assumption. Many adults probably have a nagging feeling about this version of free, I doubt most of us can accurately describe the cost (and most wouldn’t care to try).
I mean it really does “feel” free in that the costs are so abstract and externalized. In fact I’d argue that it has completely changed our perspective on pricing, value, and entitlement.
Anyways, total tangent to the main topic.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=tomtom
.. that's also when I stopped using them I think, and what's interesting is that once you get into the habit of using a new map+navigation service it seems quite hard to switch or is that just me? (I want to try Apple because I like them more than Google but I'm just so used to Google Maps)
I don't think it's just you. :) I know a fair number of iOS users who switched to the standalone Google Maps app during the, shall we say, rocky first year of Apple Maps, and who I've never been able to convince to look back -- and these are people who live in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Apple Maps is arguably at its best.
DonHopkins 5 months ago | parent | context | favorite | on: TomTom to cut 10% of jobs due to improved automati...
I worked at TomTom in Amsterdam from 2007-2009, and had a fun time and learned a lot working with some smart people at a great company that treated us well and had good leadership.
But TomTom was just on the cusp of a small company turning into a big company.
And the savings and loan crisis was about to cause the economy to collapse.
Then TomTom got into a bidding war with Garmin over Tele Atlas.
So they ended up borrowing a whole lot of money at a really bad time.
Just as the iPhone was hitting the market, and Google and Apple were rolling out free maps and turn-by-turn navigation on smart phones that everybody already had.
I wrote about that earlier in the discussion about Etak:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13747015
DonHopkins on Feb 27, 2017 | parent | context | favorite | on: Who Needs GPS? The Story of Etak's 1985 Car Naviga...
"Etak eventually became a part of TomTom, ensuring that its map data, some of which was first digitized back during the Navigator's development in 1984, would live on to this day."
The story of how TomTom and not Garmin ended up owning the data originally digitized at Etak is interesting. At the time, there were only two digital map companies: Tele Atlas (from which TomTom got their map data) and Navteq (from which Garmin got their map data).
From Wikipedia [1]:
"On July 23, 2007, a €2 billion offer for the company by navigation system maker TomTom was accepted by the Tele Atlas board. This was then trumped by a €2.3 billion offer from United States-based rival Garmin on October 31, 2007 initiating a bidding war for Tele Atlas. TomTom responded by upping their bid to €2.9 billion, an offer which was again approved by the board of Tele Atlas. Garmin had been expected to counterbid once again: with Tele Atlas' main global rival Navteq subject to a takeover bid from Nokia, the company had stated that it did not wish both companies to fall into the hands of rivals. However, after striking a content agreement with Navteq through the year 2015, Garmin withdrew its takeover offer, clearing the way for TomTom. On December 4, 2007, TomTom shareholders approved the takeover. The European Commissioner for Competition cleared the takeover in May 2008, and it closed in June."
TomTom (where I worked at the time) was shocked and dismayed that Garmin outbid them by €300 million on Tele Atlas, because while it made a lot of sense for TomTom to buy their own map data supplier, it would have been prohibitively complex and expensive for Garmin, who used Navteq data, to switch map data sources and retool their entire map data digestion, distribution and error correction pipelines.
TomTom was so determined to buy Tele Atlas and keep it out of Garmin's hands, that they raised their bid by €900 million.
In the meantime, Garmin renegotiated their deal with Navteq, so they didn't have to pay as much for the data, and didn't have to switch map suppliers.
The stunt that Garmin pulled off was, in my opinion, an ingenious head-fake that cost TomTom an enormous amount of money, almost a billion euros, and at the same time saved Garmin a whole lot of money by enabling them to renegotiate a better deal with Navteq, who was faced with losing their major customer if they didn't lower their prices.
It's likely going to be a niche market even if they give the updates away for free (because people will mostly use maps on other devices).
And the customer's alternatives include "just use year-old maps" and "use google maps" so it's not like tomtom have the customer over a barrel here.
[1] https://www.amazon.com.au/Updates-Lifetime-Smartphone-Messag...
The device you link wouldn't net updated maps of Australia. Looks like world map devices are closer to $400.
There was also an instance when they unceremoniously stopped supporting updates on “old” devices that were not actually that old and were in fact still actively being sold in stores (in the UK at least). I know people who switched to alternatives (the smartphone option in all cases IIRC) and vowed they'd never pay for another TomTom device again after that.
To be fair, perhaps more fair than is deserved IMO, the devices still did (probably still do) get qgps updates so function normally apart from having outdated maps and can, somewhat disingenuously, be said to be still be getting their lifetime updates.
Kinda a neat feature, but it makes you wonder what else it is learning.
Knowing where to switch between freeways and surface streets, and what route to take in what conditions, can cut half off the driving time.
Some examples of varying conditions from my personal history, even with optimal routing:
Commute to work: 22 minutes. Commute home: 1h 16min.
Go visit a friend: 45 minutes. Come back home at night: 16 minutes.
Yes - I remember as a kid learning how to read maps and noticing my dad's face when I was like "These cities are only 10 miles apart. Why does it take an hour to get to grandfather's?".
The surface streets are an especially interesting blindspot a lot of drivers have. There was a period around the turn of the century where I was commuting between Santa Ana and Garden Grove and freeway traffic was generally manageable early in the morning but on the trip home it was often better to cruise down the surface streets where the lights were timed around 20mph than to sit in stop-and-go traffic on 405 or 55/5.
There is a gate right behind me that is closed with chains. It isn't possible to drive through there, though you can walk in and out from the smaller gate.
Google still always tells me to drive through the gate. I don't think Google Maps auto-learns. Maybe it needs a bigger sample size so people don't abuse it?
I don't know how it can be using TomTom's data if TomTom doesn't have any of the same issues.
I really struggle to believe that. Major roads missing from Apple Maps? Can you give any examples?
Maybe they got tired of mapping the millionth quaint village named something like Branstonpickle-upon-Trousers.
Also, phones generally have larger and brighter screens, and more accurate GPS. I don’t see the advantage of TomTom here.
Their recommendations are all over the place despite the fact that I have been logged in permanently in some form or another since GMail where still invite only.
No one else except my wife and my parents know more about me (and to be perfectly clear they know different subsets of me) but yet Google still insist on showing me the most irrelevant and annoying ads and suggest I call people at work in the middle of the night etc etc.
The most annoying thing is they had this nailed. Google Desktop Search had some bonus features like the feed sidebar that automatically predicted what I wanted to read more of based on what I had read before and it was crazy good.
Search used to be amazing and these days I feel it is barely better than DDG.
Errr all maps apps do this.
Such a simple thing and yet TomTom can do it and Google can't.
I've also seen that same very app as a builtin navigation with all the features (including live traffic) in a new Fiat 500e, so it seems like they're licensing the tech to car manufacturers.
However, it still downloads an arbitrary rectangle, and there is still the same maximum size; it just automatically centers it on what you selected and gives it a reasonable name.
Google Maps offline has been extremely unreliable for me and mostly unreliable when I had the greatest need for it. This was true years ago and this was true less than a month ago.
If I'm going to someplace with spotty connectivity, I make sure to put in all the main addresses and locations on my car's navigation system ahead of time. The maps might be dated but at least it'll generate a route somewhat towards the destination, even if I might need to take a detour along the way.
That being said, why do you need your navigation to start while in your garage? Just start it before you enter your garage or right as you drive out of it if you want to benefit from GMaps benefits.
Tesla also have a "simple" version of this, if you are at home, it will automatically to go to work in the "morning", and in the afternoon it will automatically go "home" if you are at the office. But this seems to be location/time based, and not behavioural.
Yes, and this feature drove me crazy until I figured out how to turn it off. The two places I know how to get to are to work every morning, and home from work every afternoon! It's the _other_ places that need navigation.
Apple Maps does this too
Android auto gets forced into this like 4:3 resolution in the middle of the screen which sucks and I can't find a way to fix it, even after looking in developer settings.
People have said it's the car manufacturers fault, I really don't understand why it has to be this way though
I struggling to see how anything could be "definitely" better than "crappy" Google Maps. To me, GMaps has made navigation about as exciting as using a door knob. It works without fail, and is so incredibly mundane, that the thought of forming a strong opinion about it makes me drowsy.
If I use an alternative and get stuck in traffic, I'm not gonna be thinking about how proud I am of myself for sitting in traffic in the name of sticking it to Google. I'm gonna be thinking "should have used Google Maps"
The audio directions are much clearer - e.g. "Go through this light, and at the next one turn right".
The integration with Siri and CarPlay is very handy - e.g. "Hey Siri, get directions to Bob's house".
And the traffic data is noticeably better in the last year.
Disclaimer: I live in suburban U.S. - I've heard less good things about AM in rural areas.
Ranging from simple updates like hours, address corrections - to more human-oriented updates like "The end destination point is about 500 ft off from the actual location".
I believe someone really is looking at them and correcting them.
So long as you have a data connection or planned ahead with a downloaded region.
- And have a vehicle that's the size of a normal passenger car. (I used to own a special "RV GPS" that had better data on bridge heights and weight limits.)
Maybe it's just the UK maps and it works fine elsewhere, I don't know.
If you're in a city or suburb with a Google office, it's spotless, including transit options that are often customized to the city itself.
If you're in a city or suburb without a Google office, it's reliable on roads but probably doesn't cover transit particularly well. I'm not sure if the Google vs. non-Google office is just a bias towards the kind of cities Google would put an office in as opposed to the presence of an office making a difference, but Pittsburgh is much better than Columbus or Jacksonville despite being a smaller city.
If you're in a rural area, it's much rougher. Private roads marked as public roads are the biggest thing I've noticed (presumably because aerial maps can't help much there), but also things like ATV tracks and driveways marked as roads and missing one-way indicators (i.e. routing the wrong way up a one-way street).
There's an attribution saying the data is coming from the local metro provider, who has their own interface for accessing the same data, but having it in google maps is nice as it integrates well with other navigation.
So I would say it comes down more to who has partnered with google to make the data more accessible.
Maybe more anecdotal, but I have had great mileage with google maps for navigation while driving too. The government department for land information does make almost all GIS data publicly available which probably helps too.
That’s awesome! What country is this, if you don’t mind me asking? GIS datasets are really fun to play with.
* Bicycle route. They're just terrible at it. Better now than they were some years ago (when major bike routes were completely ignored), but still not great. They still prefer to send you along car routes instead of dedicated bike routes, even when those are shorter.
* Construction work (I don't think TomTom will be any better at this, though). Sometimes they do know construction work is ongoing; for example the Piet Hein tunnel near my house is closed for more than a year, and Google is aware of this. But they also don't show routes across the Amsterdamse Brug, which is still open, and the only real alternative. So instead they send you across crazy detours all over the city. But recently I was riding to Diemen along the Amsterdam-Rijnkanaal, and it turned out that dike was closed due to construction work. Big work with signs everywhere, but Google had no idea, and because there wasn't an easy way around, I had to take a big detour that would have been a lot smaller if Google had been aware of this.
I use it daily to make sure my commute doesn't have any wrecks I'll have to work around, and any time I'm going somewhere unfamiliar. It really got stress tested on our way back from Tenessee during the eclipse exodus a few years ago, routed us (and lots of cars around us lol) through all sorts of Appalachia back-roads when the main highways were clogged and got us home just fine.
With the incredibly large sample size of two I have to conclude it's region specific.
If any app would allow me to have some sort of ability to let me set a level of "pain" (traffic, stoplights, smaller roads, extra turns) that's acceptable vs. a level of time savings, I'd use that app and never look back.
The number of times I've gone seemingly way out of the way only to rejoin a highway 30 minutes later in order to save 2 minutes total (vs the traffic I would have sat in) is way too damn high.
In those cases I just mute it, there's always a mute button.
In all seriousness, have you tried Waze? Gives multiple options each time you search, allowing to choose routes that are simpler, or maybe partially but not fully use tolls.
I trusted it because I didn't really know where I was going, and it had never let me down before. So I followed its instructions down a series of little farm roads to detour around the "break". Except one of the roads crossed under a raging stream, and was only passable during the dry season. I actually fishtailed a little to stop, because the road was slightly downhill and made of dirt. If I had followed the instructions, I would have died.
Anyway, I submitted a bug report about that highway break, and 5 months later Google wrote back and said my fix had been accepted! How thrilling.
One slight oddity - it doesn't seem to care about which side of the street your destination is on in a lot of cases. Sure, in a suburban neighborhood, that's irrelevant. But in a city with two-way traffic on the street, it can matter quite a lot.
A phone running google maps is a multi-tool.
Google Maps is quite terrible in many parts of the world that are not-America. In Europe, it routinely suggests absolutely insane "shorcuts" because it doesn't seem to understand that even though a narrow, winding country lane with stone walls on either side may have a 90 kph speed limit, it would be suicide to actually drive at that speed.
They also have a tendency to make you stick to the main - congested - roads. You won't notice unless you're a local to the area though, so let's say that's good enough.
Waze in my experience seems to have more realistic ETAs and is better at routing around traffic jams. Even though it's built on Google Maps.
However I'm in Romania and I do long weekends in mountain retreats in the middle of nowhere. As I said, YMMV.
One time it wanted me to walk through the waste/sewer pipes of Mallorca to go from a beach to the city center, let me tell you it's not a pedestrian path.
But Maps is definitely worse than dedicated navigation devices, although it does improve over time.
There are certain things it is particularly bad at, for example routing down slow 20mph residential roads with speed bumps.
But... are the dedicated navigation devices so much better than Google Maps to justify the increased cost? Probably not for 99% of people.
I used to use a Garmin satnav, and plug it in to my laptop and use Garmin's software to do my travel expenses, full tracking of all my movements, and it's my data to do with as I wish with no concerns. I can do the same thing through Google Timeline... but it's not even close to as well executed, and gives me serious data privacy concerns... because Google.
This is exactly how Apple Maps works, for me. It suggests a destination based on my patterns.
OK, but you need GPS navigation and maps to get between "work" and "home"?
I’m edging closer to this way of living. Is this by choice, if so, why?
I did look into them at one point, but they had a €500 price tag which is a bit steep.
I think my security would be compromized if I had to look at a screen regularly while riding my motorbike.
I'd say a better option is to use a headset and follow vocal instructions.
Edit: they are also weather resistant which is a huge plus over most phones
TomTom is what I use on every vacation trip. Wouldn't do that with Google Maps.
Google Maps always picks strange roads and often I see me driving through a red light district or something, where TomTom would pick more conventional roads.
Unfortunately for these manufacturers, all these technologies also enabled smart phones with GPS which quickly destroyed the market.
The car does not let you change anything with the navigation if the car is in motion, apparently they've never heard of passengers.
It doesn't help that map upgrades are ferociously expensive, around a hundred dollars.
sensor derived data, user generated content, camera vans all of that is not new. All this existed when I left, so did the people mentioned in this announcement that are still running the show. I always hoped they would eventually realize that they need a fresh top management, but they seem to just keep doing the same old stuff with the same old people until the final collapse of the company.
Its still the same as person before you explains.
TomTom is trying to create competition to HERE map making platform.
And I agree a change id upper management is needed / despite new CTO being hired.
They were caught red handed in 2018 i think, and blamed on some contractors. But most interesting, despite this being a widely know fact for the mapping community, i can't find any mention of it anywhere today.
There are suspicions, but no hard proof has ever been found about this.
However, there is a well-known (and non-problematic) case where OSM-data is used in GMaps. Some polish bus agency used OSM to create their GTFS-feeds, which were ingested into GMaps. Selecting the bus line will thus show an OSM-based line layer; but as that line layer is clearly attributed with OpenStreetMap, that is totally fine; both legal and ethical. See https://twitter.com/MapAmorePH/status/1453863816110952450?t=...
If TomTom was planning on conflating OSM data with other sources then in theory it hurts their business model because they will potentially have to make their entire map (or large parts of it) freely available in OSM.
If they can somehow set up clean room conditions and keep all their other data sources physically separated from the OSM data then it might be avoided, but then how do you do the map conflation? And that would certainly impact how quickly they can make updates.
Maybe they came up with some clever way to avoid having to contribute data back to OSM and that’s what OP means by “steal.”
Yes, I'm being sarcastic. It's a win-win situation when ANY large mapping group joins OSM. At the very least; they will accidentally contribute road-level improvements when they work with the data. I rely upon OSM data and need these large players throwing their weight behind this mapping system.
They could even make an app to submit the improvements and even show me ads, I don't care. I would still do it.
You mean the accuracy of the data? I guess that is why a lot of systems have “validators” or something like that in place.
But it’s a problem with OSM and wikipedia in general.
The point of their comment was to criticise TomTom for not doing much interesting themselves, not to discuss the nuances of OSM. In this context, "steal" makes sense because it's something that TomTom can claim to be innovative with while actually the innovation credit belongs to OSM.
1. Google gets a lot of this data from their users (both from traditional crowdsourcing and sneaky things like tracking Android phones) and then locks it up so you have to pay to use it.
2. The way they license their services forces you to stay in their ecosystem. For example you are only allowed to use Google Places Search on a Google Maps map.
3. There are APIs Google just doesn't provide for various reasons and because they "own" the data, everyone else has to start from scratch (or use OSM). There's no way to download some subset of the data for a one-time sum or even a subscription license and provide your own service on top of it.
Yes, these things mostly fall into what people consider a company's freedom to do business however they like. But Google is more than just any random company and the data they gatekeep is more than just any random dataset.
One are the carmakers, OEM’s. Take for instance CARIAD, the Volkswagen software arm. They are a TomTom partner. Their strength is sensor data. There will be 40 million Volkswagen brand cars where the front camera sends data to the servers. Their problem is that they don’t have mapping expertise. They do want to build their own services on top of a base map. For instance all charging stations that are theirs. (ionity).
Then you have tomtom. Their strength is AI and machine learning and how to fuse those vehicle sensor data in the map. Also they have a team of 1.000 mapping employees in Pune, India. Making edits every day and checking change reports with other data like sattelite imagery. Their challenge is that they need those data from car sensors (and they get them)
Then there is obviously OSM. Where the strength is the wisdom of the community. But also a weakness that people can make mistakes and from time to time vandalism happens.
In this new venture you get a best of both (or in this case 3) worlds.
The India people in Pune can do quality checks on OSM data. For instance comparing with other sources. And their tools and AI can fuse sensor data from cars of tomtom partners. Those are Volkswagen group but also Stellantis (merger of Peugeot-Citroen and Fiat-Chrysler-Jeep), Toyota and others.
The TomTom base map (lowest layar) will be provided to OSM.
Forgot to mention one thing, which is Apple. TomTom gets their probe data which helps in street geometry and traffic. With the help of OSM TomTom now has a Japan map. Very important for carmakers in Japan. Big market. Because in Japan 80% of mobile phone users are iOS users (huge iPhone marketshare) this is an opportunity to get data from many sources together. Also from Japanese carmakers like Toyota who do research with TomTom on HD maps for autonomous driving and assisted driving (ADAS).
This looks like a win-win-win for all three. Carmakers, TomTom and OSM. And a worry for Google Maps and HERE technologies.
It's a press release I suppose, but saying the world lacks an open platform, and processing to use such open platform, sounds a bit weird
I'd love to hear more about that
https://daylightmap.org is built by Meta (Facebook) to allow their maps to meet their quality needs consistently while still pulling and encouraging OSM updates. This unlocks OSM data for a large amount of sensitive corporations.
I personally have made quite a few edits on behalf of customers who pointed out errors in the map.
The popularity of OSM-based navigation apps has made it useful for people to download editing apps to ensure their locale is as up-to-date as possible (this is getting better and better every year).
So it's like OSM "stable"?
Tom Tom have got their work cut out, this space is super competitive. Just passively taking the data is not a way to compete in this space. You need to step up to stand out. Tom Tom is doing this out of necessity. They've been active in this space for a long time but they are now getting a lot of competition from other companies; many of whom are pooling resources via open data efforts, like open street maps. That gives these companies a cost advantage because maintaining maps is an expensive business and the base map is now a free commodity.
Seriously though, the prestige of OSM and the companies building on it is only growing—a success story of epic proportions to the open source and open data communities!
I occasionally challenge myself, and I am always surprised how much more active my mind is, compared to GPS where my mind is passively glancing at the screen every few seconds to see if I'm on course and next turn.
If you don't navigate you lose spatial awareness over time, I know some people who can't tell you how to get to their job from their house.
It also helps to build up a mental map of the city I live in, which I find to be one of those skills you can learn which feels like a bit of a superpower. Being able to find and navigate along a route, deal with detours, or navigate yourself around congested areas.
Recently I was trying to leave a large complex parking area when we noticed it was gridlocked. We were able to navigate a way out the back that hadn't become congested yet, and save ourselves from 4+ hours of waiting and ending up on the news.
We had split the map data sources to not drive customers away and we split our licensing between our app and the map subscription. It was an interesting problem, we had one employee that only did OpenStreetMap - keeping maps up to date, manually solving problems etc - this was actually much cheaper than buying TomTom, but still we couldn’t match the quality of TomTom. So, we would recommend: do you need high accuracy maps, buy TomTom, otherwise use the cheaper variant.
We were also implementing Here Maps (the old Nokia Maps), when I left, and it looked really promising, but I think the same licensing scheme, only “cheaper”, we could make do with only about 100k in pre-bought licenses
Its an unfortunate situation of the two parties involved in this software each pointing at each other and blaming the other with neither willing to budge.
OSM, I would argue rightly says it's up to map makers how to query the data their project puts out there. The app makers claim (this sounds like BS) that OSM's data or API makes that too hard to do.
Either way absolutely unusable. If TomTom can just make a search that works better than this and layer that over the OSM data they've got a win IMO.
Plus it's very fast app with a clean interface. 100% open-source and actively developed. I can totally recommend it.
Very true. I do cut them some slack when I remember that they're essentially competing against the world leader in search. (Not that I use their search engine, but it's not for a lack of quality that I stopped using it.)
> If TomTom can just make a search that works better than this and layer that over the OSM data they've got a win IMO.
Exactly! I'd love to pay for such a product. Even better if they don't reinvent the wheel and instead just polish OsmAnd that can almost do more things than any individual person can ever know about.
I often have to use a third party to convert address to GPS coordinates.
"open" - 19 results
"open-source" - 4 results
The "open-source" refers to using other's open-source data, no mention of TomTom's.
e.g.
"The world lacks a truly open and collaborative mapping ecosystem, one that doesn’t follow a one-size-fits-all model but is flexible so that businesses can build according to their needs. One that fosters collaboration, data sharing and open innovation."
What does "open" really mean in their doublespeak?
Put all that aside, the battery went bad just around a year, it becomes even slower after each firmware upgrade. But what really p*ssed me off was their explanation to lifetime map updates.
What they do need is really someone with better vision and ethics I would say.
To be fair, it has become much better and AFAIK it uses TomTom data.
This announcement is a master class of marketing blurp with nuggets like "accelerated innovation" and low on actual content.
Seems like they are on early access with important-enough customers.
From the FAQs at https://www.tomtom.com/tomtom-maps-platform/:
> I don’t want to use the new maps with OSM, will my application continue to work if I use an older library version?
> Yes. Although we encourage you to switch to the new enhanced map to take full advantage of the new map features integrated by the OSM community.
This update is light on details around licensing of the new map.
...haven't really heard or thought or cared about poor TomTom since then though.
That to me was groundbreaking.
ViziCities was such a fun adventure and something that I'd like to pick up again at some point, or at least some sort of successor. The ecosystem for spatial visualisation on the Web has changed dramatically since I created ViziCities so I'd love to see what's possible using today's technology.
I suppose it is good that they finally noticed.
Of course it’ll eventually lead to GTA VR ugh but I can at least get what I want…blasting a Jesko on the Dallas north tollway at full chat
Many of their devices have Lifetime Maps support and it's probably costing them too much, since they're not getting paid for the updates.
BTW Garmin has been using OpenStreetMap for a LONG time.
… full of words, and absolutely no information.
Even the linked page (https://www.tomtom.com/tomtom-maps-platform/) really doesn’t make it even remotely clear what they’re announcing, or why we should care.
> The world lacks a truly open and collaborative mapping ecosystem, one that doesn’t follow a one-size-fits-all model but is flexible so that businesses can build according to their needs
What does that even mean?
I’ll tell you what it means: no, our API pricing for whatever this service is will not be public, not be self serve and not be for small time developers to play with.
Ah wait, I get it!
> With its new map, TomTom is using AI and machine-learning techniques to speed up the process and make a much greater volume of changes in a much smaller period of time. With the masses of data used, the quality of the new map will be a step above what’s currently available on the market
I see! You’re going to compete with google maps and others but you’re going to pour The AI Machine Learning on your offering to make it better than the others.
…well, I guess we’ll see how it goes.
That approach (same as everyone but we have AI!!!??!?…?) is really a bad business model.
The problem is that everyone is doing it; and only a very small number of people are doing it at a level that makes any meaningful difference, and for those companies it’s a core competency, not a value add.
So this was an announcement of an announcement…
> a flexible thing that businesses can build on according to their needs.
And if you go to their dev website... you can find the pricing for their current APIs/SDKs... So it's not like they're hiding it.
As someone who used TomTom before other options became available I can honestly say that it was an absolute nightmare. The small handheld devices took ages before loading up, had bad GPS reception and could only live on battery for 1.5 hours or so. Maps needed to be updated quarterly and would often not fit on the SD CARD. TomTom charged something in the order of 75 euro per map update.
When Google Maps became a viable alternative TomTom continued with the same business model, same paid map updates, same shitty bloatware necessary for map updates etc.. I don't understand the HN sentiment. Things were no better 15 years ago. Google Maps works. It works always. It accurate and uptodate. Dont like Google? There are plenty of OSM apps in store.
But companies, uber, lyft, carmakers, location intelligence firms etc need commercial mapping and location tech. What TomTom offers exists more for these people than the end consumer these days.
(Source: making web maps is my career. I don't touch Google Maps professionally but use it a lot personally.)
Needless to say, there is often some sucker going through there, and I have to admit I ended up there once too exactly because of Google Maps. No effort to correct it over the years, in one of the wealthiest and most important power/finance centers globally.
What you and parent describe happened to me too, maps are absolute blessing compared to what was there before but they are sometimes not that great ie in cities with a lot of traffic. Its easy to get used to something just working and start demanding perfection, when we are maybe 96% there.
If it's a farm road, there's always the option my neighbour used to do: he took his sweet time when he let the cattle cross the road. It's always fun when impatient idiots have to wait a few minutes because 50 cows are walking to their meadows across the road :)
My friends' street is the slightest bit of a shortcut. Like, it might save 30 seconds or a minute but it avoids a really annoying stoplight-controlled intersection. It is also a quiet, purely residential street. For 20+ years, people who live on that street park way out from the curb on both sides so that the street is nearly impassable for most of the day unless you drive quite slowly (like at a crawling pace). People still use it as a shortcut, but at least speeding down that low-speed-limit road where lots of kids play in the neighborhood is not so common anymore.
Natural monopolies (such as the one acquired by Google) are not bad as long as government retains the monopoly of B2 bombers.
It's not really a monopoly when it can be ended at a moment's notice
wishful thinking, I know.
Also, I refuse to use Google Maps as I am loath to let Google know my travel history. I am, however, somewhat concerned that TomTom uploads my travel history to their servers, since my device has LTE/3G capability. This was used to fetch congestion information and to offer a smarter / faster route, but since I don't have a subscription the service stopped after a free trial period.
Can someone explain to me why it's a problem? (I make the assumption that even if google doesn't do it, your carrier does, so it doesn't add anything additional to "government's ability to repress/harass".)
Privacy is vital for a functioning society. If not for you personally, then for others. By adding yourself to the mass of people, who do not care, you are helping in creating an environment, where privacy is not valued. Seen as something "only a few radicals want". Quickly abolished by governments in the name of "but think of the children!" or "but think of the terrorists!" and similar nonsense.
From your comment, it seems like your main concern is that governments can access your data. But what if beyond&above those governments, there is a single entity that's far more powerful? Would you be willingly hand the data to them? Because that is what Google is. Or is becoming. Or, if you're very sceptical: can easily become.
This often reflects and amplifies societal biases. For example, users that Google identifies as female are less likely to be shown ads for high paying jobs [0]. This creates a feedback loop: if a certain user demographic is less likely to be shown a given result, they are less likely to view it, which in turn makes them even less likely to be shown it in the first place.
[0] https://spectrum.ieee.org/amp/women-less-likely-to-be-shown-...
When they track half of humanity, they can see all kinds of patterns that they, and other people can exploit.
Let's turn your question around. If all this information is that useless and harmless why are all corporations and governments spending tens of billions of dollars acquiring and keeping?
Personally, I have two reasons to avoid Google and other tech monopolies: 1. I don't want the government to be able to subpoena my data 2. I don't want to be cut off from my digital life just because some employee clicks a button. That means I'm self hosting as much as possible.
They do, or at least they used to before the GDPR came into action. Not sure what the situation is like now.
But the software side ... oh boy. The "Garmin Explore" service this device is intended to work with looks like something from 2004. I mean not a finished product from 2004. But a proof of concept or minimal viable product from 2004. Usability is terrible. Planing trips/routes on the device is torture. Using the web interface isn't much better. (I'd link a screenshot but the service seems to be down ... again lol).
Sync breaks all the time. It's triggered by "bad" filenames for the .gpx files. Some special chars seem to break syncing so bad that the device won't sync at all until you delete the offending file in the cloud - but there's no error message. One day you just wonder why your recent route you planned in the browser isn't on the device. So you go to the sync tab and there's a message like "Last sync: 3_weeks_ago". Have fun fixing this as a normal person. (This bug also comes up when a route has a wrong count of waypoints ... it's not too many waypoints, it seems to be a number between too few and too many). I only figured this out by accident. Garmin support told me to reset the device and make a new account. (Which meant I lost all my tracks).
Now if Garmin did work on the software and provided updates I wouldn't be so salty. But there has been 0 improvements to the software side of things since the device was released like 3 years ago. ZERO. All you get is map updates which are for the street navigation side of things. The "overlanding" part? Forget it. There has been 0 bug fixes, 0 new features, nothing.
I guess you're supposed to buy the new (more expensive) Garmin device that recently came out. As if I would give Garmin one more Euro.
It's not even incompetence. It's maliciousness. They have a line up of wireless cameras (which you mount to your vehicle's bumper, etc). The cams connect via WiFi to the navigation device. Recently Garmin released a new camera - one which I'de find rather useful as it's small and works completely via battery and you can clip to the license plate. So you don't have to wire anything and can take it easily off when you don't need it.
But guess what - not compatible with my 700 Euro Android Tablet that could be made totally compatible via a software update if Garmin just wanted to. If you want to use the new cam: Buy the new 1200 Euro navi model. Oh, btw. some of the the older cameras won't work with the new device ... so you better buy a new set of new cameras.
I hope Garmin goes bankrupt. Sincerely.
/edit: I switched to the Gaia GPS app running on an iPad mini. Waaaay better experience.
I don't want Google to know all websites I visit. I don't want it to know all websites I visit, which have a map widget on them. I don't want Google to have knowledge about where I am going and when I am going anywhere. Websites for example using Google maps will indirectly enable Google to actually know these things. For example if I want to book a hotel and I want to know, how I get there from the next public transport station (or if I had a car, how I drive there). If it is a Google maps widget, data about what location I am viewing will be available to Google. Google being Google, I have no doubt, that they will try to use that for profiling people.
Relying on a becoming a monopoly does not help with freedom. The fact, that uninformed developers introduce dependencies to Google products without a second thought, makes them uninformed indirect helpers of a spying company, whose profit is based on profiling people and tracking people online, to show them pesky ads. It exposes us to the whims of a capitalistically motivated tech giant, which does not have our best interest at heart. That is, why we need alternatives. That is why at least initially any alternative based on non-Google things, is a good thing. The fewer people make use of Google (dis)services the better for all of us, because they wont have the same power over our lives.
So the whole "before Google it was better" thing, is actually a "before evil tech giant monopoly" thing.
But that’s scary. I want a competitor that offers at least roughly similar quality, but Google is so far ahead that it’s no contest.
Probably due to all the OSM data they include, in fairness.
I always check both Apple and Google Maps, but use Apple maps on my iphone because its way more battery efficient.
https://venturebeat.com/business/duckduckgo-ducks-google-to-...
How will that happen realistically? The truth is it's impossible to compete with ad-funded tech giants in the current state of affairs.
For that to change two things are needed:
1 . government intervention to break up Google ads from their maps and other businesses, leveling the playing field for their competitors who aren't making money via ads (not really gonna happen in the US, but maybe ... wink wink EU)
2. consumers now being OK with having to pay market prices for subscriptions to essential services like maps, email, etc. that they got used to getting for free through their personal data monetization (also not really gonna happen because people don't like paying for stuff they used to get for free and also many people can't afford to pay)
At least for walking and cycling, OSM has data leagues better than Gmaps. Also for driving actually, but navigation is indeed not as good. Lack of traffic info...
Google search is also in a similar position - the vast amount of users means its competitors just cannot improve their product because users become disappointed with the quality and stop using it, thus denying them a chance to improve their product.
The old solution to prevent anti-competitive behaviour and foster healthy capitalism was to break them up. But for more modern problems like this, I think a different approach is also needed - we need to force such monopolies to also share their data with the competitors, till the competitors become large enough to compete with them on their own.
(For those seeking a decent alternatives to Google Maps, I recommend Here - https://wego.here.com/ - it was owned by Nokia before they sold it to a consortium of European automobile manufacturers and is quite good).
Some of problems I've had with Google Maps recently:
- Routing gives me weird bypasses that aren't necessary and often actually add time to the trip. I've started to not trust the routing.
- The UX when searching for places is extremely difficult to navigate, especially when trying to use map view instead of list view
- planning a route _without_ asking for directions is near impossible because many street and landmark names are not displayed
- Landmarks are drowned out by the overwhelming clutter of business names (paid ads)
- Maps are sometimes wrong in my area and I have no idea how to get them fixed.
I've started using OsmAnd for most of my mapping needs lately, and it's better in almost every way _as a map_. The only major thing it's lacking for me is traffic-aware navigation.
I also noticed a quirk where it would send me 2km down a road just to turn back and drive the 2km back to where I came from. First few times I thought I must have added a waypoint but nope - sometimes it just makes you waste time.
Apple Maps might be better but I can't use it as it has a quirk with "Environmental Zones" in Germany. There are 3 kinds of zones: Red, Yellow and Green. Your car has a badge with a color (depends on how environmentaly friendly it is). So a green badge can enter every zone, a yellow badge only yellow and red zones, and a red badge only red zones.
Now whenever Apple Maps encounters such a zone in the route the navigation switches to a waaaay zoomed out view (tends to display the whole route on a map). So you can't really see the next turn, etc.
To get rid of that view Apple Maps expects you to click on OK. Which really sucks while driving.
What's infuriating is that you can't turn off the env zone checking or even just tell Maps that "my car has a green badge so PLEAS FOR F SAKES STOP PESTERING ME EVERY TIME YOU ENCOUNTER A ZONE". (Those zones are very common - every bigger town is a green zone. So Apple Maps becomes _really_ unusable on longer trips).
[1] https://www.germanemissionssticker.com
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_emission_standards
The result is that almost no one goes there anymore. All the inner city shops are closing down - while the mall style shopping centers on the outskirts are flourishing.
Walkable cities sound great in theory. Until you realize that shopping groceries _really_ sucks when you have to carry full bags for 3 kilometers or have to use over-filled public transport.
This drives me absolutely batty. No matter how much I zoom in, I cannot see exit number labels. Sometimes they show up, at random places along the exit ramp, but I haven't figured out the rhyme or reason how.
Real maps clearly label exit numbers of every exit. I don't understand why this is so hard for Google Maps.
I have switched to OsmAnd, and the only thing I miss now and then is a good geocoder.
This. I use mostly OsmAnd, I especially like it when on bike or pedestrian mode. But yes sometime traffic info is a must so I use GM few times per year for this.
According to the GitHub Issues/Dicussions, this isn't an issue with the iOS implementation. Just the Android one. Hopefully something they can fix.
This is NOT what I want ever.
Another thing that bothers me, when using the my phone as the map display I can search for places along my route and go back to normal navigation mode. Then as I drive whatever I am searching for will pop up along the route when we get close to it (say restaurants or gas stations). You can't do this in Android Auto, you have to always select the location or clear the results entirely.
With so many iPhones and Apple Maps being an smoother experience (Siri/OS integration), it definitely competes heavily with Google (at least in US).
Last night I tried thr single button “Share ETA” from CarPlay, too.
For a maps company the map is the service they offer, for Google is just a data gathering service
Want an open source facebook / twitter? Here you go: https://qbix.com/platform
I now use the TomTom Android app and it's better than any other app or device I have used. Good maps, with clear instructions and great traffic information.
How do you compete against "free" from companies that are able to build monopolies with the help of institutions?
It's easy to say "it was shit before google", when innovations weren't available
> When Google Maps became a viable alternative TomTom continued with the same business model, same paid map updates, same shitty bloatware necessary for map updates etc..
I agree with that one, they didn't adapt
And it works. It works always (even more than GMaps because it's offline first). It's also accurate. And up to date.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20734665
DonHopkins on Aug 19, 2019 | parent | next [–]
When I was at TomTom, they ran a contest for employees to come up with fun ways to gamify their internet-connected GPS Personal Navigation Devices.
Some wise guy came up with the brilliant idea of maintaining a real-time "Top 10 Speeders" leaderboard for every single road on the entire map. Kinda like Foursquare for speeding on local roads. No matter where you were driving in the world, you could instantly see the top ten speeds of other TomTom users who drove down that same stretch of road, and put the pedal to the metal to claim or defend your own spot on the leaderboard!
That one went over like a lead balloon with the legal department.
The only thing worse would be a chat app for texting while driving above the speed limit with other Leaderboard members along the same stretch of road.
They also didn't appreciate my proposal for TomTomagotchi: a simulated personality on your PND that relentlessly begs you to drive it all around town to various interesting places it wants to visit, to improve its mood and satisfy its cravings. (Kind of like having virtual kids!) I'm sure there's a revenue model having drive through Burger Kings and car washes pay for placements.
Google Maps on my phone works fine, and on my current Pixel 5A, I can navigate off battery for a three or four hours. Plenty of walking time to hit multiple points in a day of walking.
Maybe some day the TomTom app will be competitive with Google maps, but for now, Google maps is the reference by which all other mapping will be judged.
The incumbents don't have the crutch of the other business unit and can't price match, and go out of business.
Then the monopolist raises prices and there's no competition and no alternative.
It's fine, though google maps has gotten pretty bad; I'll just switch back to Waze.
I use google maps sdk on mobile because generally the data is much better quality for POI than Apple Maps, but doing geocoding is a lot more expensive so that’s where I use TomTom. Seems to work fine for me so far.
Did you mean they stopped your particular subscription only, for having changed your device?
The data is virtually nonexistent in most places, at least until StreetComplete started asking for it, but I imagine that many will find it a useful addition if it starts being rendered or used in route calculations now that it's available here and there. (Which then leads to more people seeing the use and contributing that data, which again makes it more useful.) Finding your way in an unfamiliar place in pitch blackness is a lot harder regardless of safety.
edit: I will keep both though ;)
If you feel like the question / answer should be improved, check the StreetComplete issue tracker for existing issues / discussions and if there isn't any matching, create a new one.
People are sometimes curious about it, and comparing it to Wikipedia is the best way to explain the importance of it.
Good maps are incredibly important. Separating that from financial incentives is necessary.
I edited something, one month later someone reverted it back without any explanation.
And the UX for discussion is even worse than on Wikipedia, which is saying something. So I have no idea why it was reverted, no idea how to contact the guy and no mood to investigate.
So my street has a wrong name and I am too lazy to change it
If you can link us to your changes I’m happy to try to help find out why your change was reverted. Usually that’s only the case for blatant errors, copying from proprietary maps (ehm, Google Maps) or vandalism.
We’re trying to be a friendly bunch, and I’d like to get you back as an editor.
To find the changeset, navigate to the location on openstreetmap.org, right-click, query features, and select the feature in question. The web page should then look like this: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/93668654/
In the left pane click "View history" to see all the changesets affecting that feature. Find the one you want, then click the link next to "Changeset #". The web page should then look like this: https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/104465654
The comment on the changeset might already contain enough information to answer why it undid your edit. If not, the left pane now has a text box for you to add a comment to the discussion. The user in question should receive a notification/email when you comment, and will hopefully engage in the discussion.
The local (mostly national) community can often explain why an edit was reverted (if the mapper who did it won't), or mediate with that mapper if they are in the wrong. Just keep in mind that we are all volunteers.
Sometimes one can find specific local communities here, too: https://openstreetmap.community/
I've since gotten back into editing here and there, but the initial experience likely prevented me from really getting into OSM and becoming some kind of editing master.
The issue is the car vendors do not want to surrender their navigation and entertainment to Google and Apple as navigation system options at >$1500 and ongoing updates are precious margin and recurring revenue that they all desire.
With Android Auto or CarPlay they give that all up.
They are both dead men walking but like to do a full court press like this every few years to remind us all they still have the lights on.
This market is shrinking and will continue to shrink.
"There’s also significant talk about how the company will use OSM data. It’s clear TomTom is treading cautiously and respectfully here.".
That's something you might expect to read in an article written by an independent journalist, not a corporate press release written by in-house staff.
That’s a press release writing best practice. Your goal is to match the journalistic writing style as closely as possible, all the while still transporting all the messages you want to transport. Make it easy for the journalist to be lazy. It has been this way since basically forever because PR writers know that journalists are under a lot of time pressure and often don’t even have the resources to write everything from scratch. So you offer them something that’s hard to resist …
I guess the web has sort of muddied the waters there (with companies being able to publish press releases on their own websites) but the intended target audience of press releases are actually journalists. In the past companies usually had no way of publishing and distributing news about themselves on their own. (And, to be honest, press releases on their own website still aren’t the best publishing platform.)
A lot of "stories" that are released under reporter bylines, are actually verbatim from the corporation or government agency. I wouldn't be surprised if the original text is copyrighted, so people can't play with it too much.
Many years ago, an Australian magazine, called Crikey, did a series on Spin in the Media: https://www.crikey.com.au/topic/spinning-the-media/
It‘s about making things as convenient as possible for journalists, not legal enforcement of anything.
I'm not so sure about that being the principal motive. I think it's actually a way to exert control. I remember discussions with our marketing folks. Pretty eye-opening.
"Communication," in corporations, is really about controlling and shaping the message, and building the brand.
You see these coordinated campaigns, all the time. Usually, they are efforts to control the vocabulary (for example, instead of calling camera flashes "flashes," we try to always refer to them as "speedlights," and get everyone else to use the same language).
Also, you have things like entertainers starting to behave badly, just as their albums and movies are coming out, etc. I'll bet that publicists ask entertainers to time things like divorce announcements, with significant market events.
It's really Machiavellian.
When I say “it‘s about making things as convenient as possible for journalists” what I mean by that (and what I thought I had made pretty clear) is not that convenience for the journalist is the ultimate goal.
The ultimate goal is to get the messages about your announcement you want to have published published. The convenience is a stepping stone towards that destination. That way you exert control without force or threats. It’s the carrot.
Which is not to say that threats are absent from corporate communication. Just not as part of press release writing and publishing.
There is probably more than a century of tradition and expectations around how journalists can work with press releases. Whether companies could sue them for releasing press releases (it‘s in the name!) is in that light mostly theoretical. Because no one would sue.
What was it that someone once said (not sure who)?
”Never pick a fight with someone that buys ink by the barrel.”
Great, so they'll suck open street map data, but won't contribute back.
IMO if someone wants to compete against Google Maps, then the Chromium open source strategy ought to work well against them. Many players building on an open source map. Not just roads, but full 3D meshes, building annotations, internal maps of public buildings e.g airports e.t.c
Cruise has started rolling our driverless cars in SF at night. Their strategy is mapping all of SF at centimeter accuracy and having every car have a fresh map as it drives around.
For me, that feels like the future of mapping. A fresh map of the world at centimeter accuracy, then hierarchical layers of abstraction with lesser details.
They already are.
> Same as apple, they'll build their own map in a private walled garden and suck bits off OSM but won't contribute back.
They already are and have for years.
Damn, somebody should tell them about OpenStreetMap