5 ms·

I'm going to guess: not enough customers to get them to a point where the business is sustainable and not being able to find inverstors that are willing to inve

I'm going to guess: not enough customers to get them to a point where the business is sustainable and not being able to find inverstors that are willing to invest in something like this. They have a very nice product but competing with the likes of Google is hard.

glennon 9y ago
Mapzen was part of Samsung.
- daenney 9y ago
  Ha, I did not know that. I knew it came out of the Samsung accelerator, didn't know they were actually owned by Samsung. My guess is probably wrong in that case. However, from all that I can find it states they're supported by Samsung Research, to me that's not the same thing as 'part of' Samsung, which would imply ownership.
  - pc86 9y ago
    > However, from all that I can find it states they're supported by Samsung Research, to me that's not the same thing as 'part of' Samsung, which would imply ownership. You are correct. They are not owned by Samsung, they were simply part of the accelerator.
    - djsumdog 9y ago
      I could see how this would be a critical concept for Samsung, as it may need to position itself one day to be separate from the Google ecosystem.
    - devalisher 9y ago
      Mapzen is Samsung according to their terms.
    - daenney 9y ago
      Actually, as someone else pointed out, in Mapzen's terms of service: > These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern the terms by which you (if registering on behalf of yourself) or the entity you represent (if registering as a business) (“Customer,” “you” or “your”) may utilize the mapping tools and services made available by Samsung Research America, Inc. on behalf of its Mapzen business unit (“Mapzen˝ or ˝we˝ or ˝us˝ or “our”). Seems they were actually part of Samsung. Makes me wonder why they shuttered Mapzen. I can see this being useful to them for Tizen amongst other things.
  - glennon 9y ago
    Perhaps- though the Mapzen name is trademarked by Samsung Electronics, Korea
  - cwmma 9y ago
    According to some people I knew who worked there, they were owned by Samsung
spaceflunky 9y ago
People don't realize how onerous and expensive it is to run a mapping service (even if you use OSM data). For example, the Google Maps API and the Bing Maps APIs are most likely totally subsidized services. Google/MSFT are able to justify the cost because the mapping tools are used in so many other products. And since the cost of development is spread over multiple places, the true cost of the geo services are not reflected in the prices of the services. Whereas someone like Mapzen has to recoup all of their costs on just the services. Additionally, companies like Mapzen make this mistake in believing that because Google (and a few others) have this massive Maps API ecosystem that there's a ton of money in this market. I've seen similar investment slides and their argument boils down to something like, "well Google/msft is aggressively going after this market so that means there MUST be money here" and that's the bulk of the justification. Honestly, I don't even think Google/MSFT know why they have been going after the Maps API market so aggressively. For one, Google has completely and utterly failed to leverage the Maps API to transition or segue customers onto Google Cloud Platform where there is obviously a lot of money to be made. So like what else is there? There's no way the geo services business matches the cloud, ads, youtube, or chrome/android business. Not to mention all the other shit going on. In conclusion, I feel like we will see other services fail as well. I would be SHOCKED to see MapBox continue on or even IPO. They will most likely be sold once investors realize what I've just discussed or shut down. I also predict that Google / MSFT will just limit their interest in this product unless they can find a way to help it drive GCP/Azure business.
- Doctor_Fegg 9y ago
  Mapbox have products that people want to use. Mapbox GL is an astonishing product almost entirely without competition, and their routing is also top-notch. It remains to be seen whether 200+ employees and sunk costs is a sustainable business; it's an audacious bet on their part that it is. But Mapbox without doubt has the foundations of a very sustainable business within it. Mapzen never had the revenue, and never looked like it was trying very hard to get it, presumably betting that its Samsung parent would keep the tap running (and, to their credit, being aggressively open-source so that their work wasn't wasted when the day came that the tap was turned off). A bunch of the stuff they did was technologically really fascinating and valuable, such as Who's On First (their geocoder), but never got to saleable product stage. Commercially Mapzen hobbled themselves for geocoding by their laudable insistence on being a 100% open solution: you simply can't do worldwide, reliable, saleable address-level geocoding with open data yet. Note too that there are a bunch of less noisy players within the OSM ecosystem - Geofabrik, Thunderforest, Graphhopper - who do work which is often as interesting and performant as the Silicon Valley companies, yet with a much lower profile. If you're looking for alternatives following the Mapzen shutdown, I'd commend all three.

glennon 9y ago

Mapzen was part of Samsung.

daenney 9y ago
Ha, I did not know that. I knew it came out of the Samsung accelerator, didn't know they were actually owned by Samsung. My guess is probably wrong in that case. However, from all that I can find it states they're supported by Samsung Research, to me that's not the same thing as 'part of' Samsung, which would imply ownership.
- pc86 9y ago
  > However, from all that I can find it states they're supported by Samsung Research, to me that's not the same thing as 'part of' Samsung, which would imply ownership. You are correct. They are not owned by Samsung, they were simply part of the accelerator.
  - djsumdog 9y ago
    I could see how this would be a critical concept for Samsung, as it may need to position itself one day to be separate from the Google ecosystem.
  - devalisher 9y ago
    Mapzen is Samsung according to their terms.
  - daenney 9y ago
    Actually, as someone else pointed out, in Mapzen's terms of service: > These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern the terms by which you (if registering on behalf of yourself) or the entity you represent (if registering as a business) (“Customer,” “you” or “your”) may utilize the mapping tools and services made available by Samsung Research America, Inc. on behalf of its Mapzen business unit (“Mapzen˝ or ˝we˝ or ˝us˝ or “our”). Seems they were actually part of Samsung. Makes me wonder why they shuttered Mapzen. I can see this being useful to them for Tizen amongst other things.
- glennon 9y ago
  Perhaps- though the Mapzen name is trademarked by Samsung Electronics, Korea
- cwmma 9y ago
  According to some people I knew who worked there, they were owned by Samsung

spaceflunky 9y ago

People don't realize how onerous and expensive it is to run a mapping service (even if you use OSM data). For example, the Google Maps API and the Bing Maps APIs are most likely totally subsidized services. Google/MSFT are able to justify the cost because the mapping tools are used in so many other products. And since the cost of development is spread over multiple places, the true cost of the geo services are not reflected in the prices of the services. Whereas someone like Mapzen has to recoup all of their costs on just the services. Additionally, companies like Mapzen make this mistake in believing that because Google (and a few others) have this massive Maps API ecosystem that there's a ton of money in this market. I've seen similar investment slides and their argument boils down to something like, "well Google/msft is aggressively going after this market so that means there MUST be money here" and that's the bulk of the justification. Honestly, I don't even think Google/MSFT know why they have been going after the Maps API market so aggressively. For one, Google has completely and utterly failed to leverage the Maps API to transition or segue customers onto Google Cloud Platform where there is obviously a lot of money to be made. So like what else is there? There's no way the geo services business matches the cloud, ads, youtube, or chrome/android business. Not to mention all the other shit going on. In conclusion, I feel like we will see other services fail as well. I would be SHOCKED to see MapBox continue on or even IPO. They will most likely be sold once investors realize what I've just discussed or shut down. I also predict that Google / MSFT will just limit their interest in this product unless they can find a way to help it drive GCP/Azure business.

Doctor_Fegg 9y ago
Mapbox have products that people want to use. Mapbox GL is an astonishing product almost entirely without competition, and their routing is also top-notch. It remains to be seen whether 200+ employees and sunk costs is a sustainable business; it's an audacious bet on their part that it is. But Mapbox without doubt has the foundations of a very sustainable business within it. Mapzen never had the revenue, and never looked like it was trying very hard to get it, presumably betting that its Samsung parent would keep the tap running (and, to their credit, being aggressively open-source so that their work wasn't wasted when the day came that the tap was turned off). A bunch of the stuff they did was technologically really fascinating and valuable, such as Who's On First (their geocoder), but never got to saleable product stage. Commercially Mapzen hobbled themselves for geocoding by their laudable insistence on being a 100% open solution: you simply can't do worldwide, reliable, saleable address-level geocoding with open data yet. Note too that there are a bunch of less noisy players within the OSM ecosystem - Geofabrik, Thunderforest, Graphhopper - who do work which is often as interesting and performant as the Silicon Valley companies, yet with a much lower profile. If you're looking for alternatives following the Mapzen shutdown, I'd commend all three.