France Says Google Maps is Guilty of Being a Free Resource

February 2, 2012 6 Comments

You got to love France.

A French commercial court has found Google guilty of abusing the dominant position of its Google Maps application and ordered it to pay a fine and damages to a French mapping company.
In a ruling Tuesday, the Paris court upheld an unfair competition complaint lodged by Bottin Cartographes against Google France and its parent company Google Inc. for providing free web mapping services to some businesses.
The court ordered Google to pay 500,000 euros ($660,000) in damages and interest to the plaintiff and a 15,000 euro fine.

Bottin Cartographes’ webpage is sparse on what actually they do that people want.  Rule number one of failing, sue the rich competitor when your own stuff  falls flat.  Clearly Europe has it’s eye on Google and I suspect we’ll see many more of these “judgements”.  And god forbid, don’t let Bottin find out about OpenStreetMap.  They dump just about anything on the market for free.

The French Judge in the case was quick to "pass" on the ruling.

Filed under Google, Google Maps Tagged with , , ,

It’s Only Evil if You Get Caught, Right?

January 17, 2012 3 Comments

From RWW

The official blog of Open Street Map reports tonight that someone at a range of Google IP addresses in India has been editing the collaboratively made map of the world in some very unhelpful ways, like moving and deleting information and reversing the direction of one-way streets on the map.

I’m not going to bring up the don’t be evil quote, but clearly Google is beginning to lose control of their empire.  Rouge employees do what they think is best for the company, but cleaning house won’t change things.  It’s a culture of attack competitors and apologize later.  I’m sure Google will eventually “make right” what happened, but what about all those times they haven’t gotten caught?

Googlezilla is a dangerous beast. It comes out of the water and starts messing with your pretty little town.

Truthfully, this is a management problem.  The chair moisteners from Sector 7G are being either told to do this directly or indirectly by someone else.  Hopefully Google changes their management style to clamp down on these issues.

Update:  RWW has confirmation from Google that these were two people doing unauthorized edits on the company dime.  Again, clearly this is a management problem.

Filed under Google, Google Maps, OpenStreetMap Tagged with , ,

Goodbye Google Maps? A Trend Appears

January 11, 2012 3 Comments

Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

We at StreetEasy decided to build our own maps using, among other tools, OpenStreetMap, TileMill, MapBox and Leaflet, instead of paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to Google. And yes, the money pushed us into doing it, but we’re happier with the result because we now control the contents of our maps.

The free ride had to end for most companies.  But what is surprising is how easy it is to change your tile map service.  Plus see a theme here?  OpenStreetMap, TileMill, MapBox and Leaflet is a trend.  Giddy up!

Filed under Google, Google Maps, Leaflet, OpenStreetMap Tagged with , , , , ,

Google Maps – The Game

January 11, 2012 4 Comments

In about a month, Google is going to release a game on Google+ based on Google Maps and built using WebGL (Sorry IE users).

…there’s a video preview of a new Google Maps for Google+ app – shown below – which uses WebGL and apparently user-location to collect points as you travel around floorplan maps. Full details haven’t been shared, but the game will apparently arrive in February.

Now the video doesn’t show much about the details for the game but navigating a 3d mapping world (using the Google Maps API) in a WebGL application in a browser is pretty awesome.  Plus going inside and outside the buildng?  Sign me up!

Looks like fun to me, but we'll have to wait a month.

It is a shame about WebGL support not being exactly cross-platform, but with a little work you can get it enabled on any browser.  Cools stuff is on the horizon with 3D web mapping applications.

Filed under Google, Google Maps Tagged with , ,

OpenStreetMap Has Momentum, Apparently

January 9, 2012 10 Comments

All joking aside, this is great news for the project.

Nestoria is one of those companies that was told it would have to start paying real money for Google Maps. When Google couldn’t tell it exactly how much, Nestoria kicked Mountain View to the curb and switched to OpenStreetMap, a free, collaborative effort to map the globe.

A couple of thoughts about this article and OSM/Google Maps.

1.  Google has to tell people how much they are going to charge for their maps sooner rather than later.  No one can run a company without a clear idea of costs (well at least run a company for longer than 6 months).  While Nestoria could have done better due diligence before banking on Google, clearly it is easy enough to move platforms.  Lock-in is something that online mapping APIs do not have.

2.  Freyfogle is completely wrong:

… Freyfogle says, and they must render what Google wants them render — a criticism Google did not address when we asked the company for clarification. “You can make your maps look however you want. Rivers can be red instead of blue if you wanted…. With Google you’re not getting any data. You just get a map on your page.”

You can make the Google Maps look anyway you want dynamically.  That’s pretty awesome because you don’t have to create your own tiles.  He says Google didn’t respond to his questions, but I would assume someone using an API would know what it does (seriously, how can you not research an API that is critical to your app?).

3.  Steve Coast is still alive.  Hey Steve!

4.  OpenStreetMap is growing and will continue grow if Google fails to address the customer service aspects of the Google Maps API.  Leaflet is the key to gaining control over your applications (Nestoria uses it).  Learn it, use it, love it.

One by one, the Gorillas are choosing OSM.

Filed under Google, Google Maps, Leaflet, Open Source, OpenStreetMap Tagged with , , , , ,

Users Demand Google Maps or They’ll Leave Your Service

December 5, 2011 1 Comment

I’m sure there were good reasons for Garmin to use Bing over Google Maps, but their users weren’t sold on it.

…a year later, Garmin acted. Users may now select which of the two providers to use. It’s a bit of a cop-out fix, likely due to the positive things some users said about Bing. Or, perhaps it is based on an agreement with Microsoft, as many forum posters wondered.

As ProgrammableWeb points out, this has to be expensive to offer both Google and Bing.

Most likely, Garmin is now paying twice for its mistake. Both Google and Microsoft have enterprise versions and Garmin is likely not eligible to use the free versions.

For consumer applications, clearly Google Maps is the only choice you can offer.  Even with pricing changes, companies will continue to have to offer Google Maps otherwise they’ll face unhappy users.

A little pepper spray removes that Bing Maps from your apps.

Filed under GIS Tagged with , ,

GIS Doesn’t Go Inside Buildings Guys

November 29, 2011 45 Comments

Clearly Google doesn’t understand anything about Professional GIS.  30 years ago, GIS and CAD came to a conclusion.  GIS would work outside the building shell and CAD would handle the inside.  Clearly this has been respected for a generation of GISPs.

But in typical Google fashion, they ignore the truce and now their GIS system (yes I’m not crazy) supports inside the building queries.

Detailed floor plans automatically appear when you’re viewing the map and zoomed in on a building where indoor map data is available. The familiar “blue dot” icon indicates your location within several meters, and when you move up or down a level in a building with multiple floors, the interface will automatically update to display which floor you’re on. All this is achieved by using an approach similar to that of ‘My Location’ for outdoor spaces, but fine tuned for indoors.

So it is a stupid Andoid app and nothing more, for now.  But clearly there is an API in there just waiting to be used.  Of course New Yorker’s fear being tracked on their cell phones so it remains to be seen if Google will feel any backlash for tracking your cell phone (cue the old “opt-in” defense).

Now I’m not sure how stupid Google thinks users are though.  Is “Find my Favorite Coffee Shop” still something that people need help with?

Filed under GIS Tagged with , ,

MapQuest Map API Transactions Are Now Free

November 17, 2011 1 Comment

So Google did the right thing by actually charging for their API.  We all expected other APIs to jump in and show the world how they are either cheaper or better.  Well MapQuest jumped in with free with no transaction limits for their “Open Data” Map API.

MapQuest is excited to announce a change to our limits, which includes no preset limit on maps within our free Community Edition license!

Ah, but what about their licensed map versions?

 In addition, we are setting higher limits on our other service calls (the highest in the industry), with 5,000 geocodes, 5,000 routes and 5,000 search calls allowed per day.

If you click over to their blog post, you can see a chart that outlines all the features of the different options.  What is interesting is the Community Edition/Open Data tier allows free on Private and/or Paid Commercial Web Apps and Mobile Apps.  I can’t think of any apps that use MapQuest offhand now, but I suspect these new changes will at least get people to look.

MapQuest is still in a tight spot, but at least they are running faster.

Filed under GIS Tagged with , ,

Weather in Google Maps? Natch!

August 18, 2011 Leave a Comment

Is there nothing Google Maps can’t do?

![Google Maps with Weather](http://images.spatiallyadjusted.com.s3.amazonaws.com/googlemapsweather.jpg)

Now we’ve got a [weather layer](http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2011/08/rain-or-shine-see-weather-in-google.html) in Google Maps that will probably end up replacing the need for things like [Weather.gov](http://www.weather.gov) or even [NOAA](http://www.noaa.gov).

Given the budget issues in Washington, why not outsource the Weather Service to Google? While they are at it, why not the Postal Service[ref]Why does every U.S. government entitity end in “service”?[/ref] to Google Mail?

Seriously though, after the coffee shop example, is there a better GIS mapping demo than weather?

Filed under GIS Tagged with ,

Google+ Demo Site Uses Google Maps API

June 29, 2011 Leave a Comment

Have you seen the Google+ Demo site?  It uses the Google Maps API as a presentation canvas. That’s pretty slick!

Google Maps, you put the boom boom into my heart!

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