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How Mapbox Is Winning Over Developers to Challenge Google's Mapping Dominance

336 points by coloneltcb 8y ago

pcwalton 8y ago
Mapbox has some really cool tech. They care a lot about rendering performance and do a lot of open-source work in the GPU vector graphics space; e.g. https://github.com/mapbox/mapbox-gl-js https://github.com/mapbox/mapbox-gl-js I've always enjoyed chatting with their engineers about vector graphics stuff. :)
marricks 8y ago
Surprising to see competition in a space that is so dominated by Google. I hoped it’d be some open source endeavor, but seeing the link was Forbes I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up... that said competition and options is good!
- dmitriid 8y ago
  It's not surprising at all. Google have essentially built a moat that is very hard to cross: https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat
  - tallytalwar 8y ago
    Specific map rendering projects from mapzen: Web Renderer: https://github.com/tangrams/tangram https://github.com/tangrams/tangram Native/Mobile Renderer: https://github.com/tangrams/tangram-es https://github.com/tangrams/tangram-es Native renderer can be accessed for android through gradle, ios through cocoapods and even available on raspberry pi. Scene file documentation: https://github.com/tangrams/tangram-docs https://github.com/tangrams/tangram-docs https://mapzen.com/documentation/tangram/ https://mapzen.com/documentation/tangram/ (still seems to work :D) Scene file authoring tool: https://github.com/tangrams/tangram-play https://github.com/tangrams/tangram-play Which continues to live at http://tangram.city/play/ http://tangram.city/play/ One of the great features of tangram is to embed any glsl shader in the scene file, which gets injected during rendering and "transforms" the map rendering and the map experience to a all new level, giving the some great flexibility cartographer/designer/developer will like. As an example check this demo "tron" scene: https://tangrams.github.io/tron-style/#15/37.7926/-122.4003 https://tangrams.github.io/tron-style/#15/37.7926/-122.4003 (source: https://github.com/tangrams/tron-style https://github.com/tangrams/tron-style) Tangram had some great consumer base including this amazing project called StreetComplete (https://github.com/westnordost/StreetComplete/ https://github.com/westnordost/StreetComplete/). Check it out and use it to improve osm street data. Also mapzen's geocode engine Pelias, continues to live as geocode.earch, which it out at https://geocode.earth/ https://geocode.earth/. Disclamer, I used to work for mapzen on the tangram-es (native rendering) project and still supporting the project in the open source world (along with other tangram-es developers). If anyone interested has any questions, you can contact me @tallytalwar on twitter.
- arsey 8y ago
  Much of the data they use is open source, coming from OpenStreetMap.
- dougmccune 8y ago
  A huge amount of Mapbox's tech is open source, including the entirety of their WebGL rendering engine. They rely heavily on OpenStreetMap, which is all open data.
- zerebubuth 8y ago
  Mapzen, a now sadly defunct mapping startup, released all of its software open-source, including WebGL mobile and browser SDKs, map tile rendering, search and routing. Take a look at: https://github.com/tangrams/ https://github.com/tangrams/ https://github.com/tilezen/ https://github.com/tilezen/ https://github.com/valhalla/ https://github.com/valhalla/ https://github.com/pelias/ https://github.com/pelias/ (Full disclosure: used to work at Mapzen)
valar_m 8y ago
I have no evidence to support it, but this article feels like bought and paid for PR.
- tarr11 8y ago
  Because it's in Forbes?
  - marnett 8y ago
    Native advertising.
  - maxerickson 8y ago
    forbes.com/sites might as well be wordpress.com, it's just some blog. Pretty amazing how little such a big brand is actually worth.
    - koboll 8y ago
      Did you miss "This story appears in the May 31, 2018 issue of Forbes" below the byline of this article?
    - zymhan 8y ago
      Note that the author is actually a Forbes Staff member. It's not _just_ a blog post. But in general, definitely look closely at the forbes.com/sites articles.
- ropeadopepope 8y ago
  All media is bought and paid for PR. The only question is who's paying for it and why. That's not necessarily a bad thing, either. It's just the way it is.
  - jefurii 8y ago
    I wouldn't say that all media is PR specifically, but it's true that all media is bought and paid for by somebody. It might be a giant corporation paying a mechanical turk to write what they want. It might be somebody with the luxury of taking their own time to write. It might be a professional journalist working for a publication that sells ad space to pay its bills, and which doesn't want to piss off ad buyers.
chrishynes 8y ago
Not so surprising after Google's recent pricing changes. They reduced the free tier by an order of magnitude and 10xed prices. Google maps is no longer good for hobby projects as the free tier is so low. It's like they're trying to drive away everybody but but big enterprise shops.
- wheaties 8y ago
  That's probably a good business strategy for the future of Maps. The fewer clients you have, the more focused you can be in terms of product development and pricing. This is true in many businesses, actually.
  - Retric 8y ago
    It's risky to leave customers out that will feed your competition.
    - csallen 8y ago
      Every business decision carries risk. The question is whether or not the risk is acceptable. If you don't want to serve any customers making under $10M, then other companies serving those customers are not your competition. At least not today. Is there a risk they might take their broader customer base and use it to compete with you upmarket some day? Yes. But that's why you do things like build a brand, relationships, technologies, and other competitive advantages within your niche. Fancy steakhouses generally don't worry about McDonald's. (Not that this is a perfect analogy to Google vs MapBox. Just speaking generally here in response to your general point.)
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
- donkeyd 8y ago
  Maybe they are. There's a huge difference in approach between the two. With enterprise customers, customer support will be very different for example.
bazizbaziz 8y ago
Last I checked, MapBox's WebGL based vector tile renderer was a cut above the rest. For simple mapping, Google's stuff may cut it, but MapBox has the ability to draw complex vector polygons over a wide area that render/zoom/scroll fast and provide a nice experience. This is pretty important if you want to provide fine grained analysis of geographic areas. If you wanted this on GMaps, you were stuck rendering all your vectors to image tiles, hugely increasing the size. MapBox's vector support made this very easy! It may be that Google/free options have caught up in this space, but I haven't re-evaluated in a few years. I think MapBox could also be a winner in the GIS space as the GIS options have not made the most graceful move to the web.
- zerebubuth 8y ago
  Mapzen, a now sadly defunct mapping startup, also had an awesome (if I say so myself - I used to work there, but not on that team) vector tile renderer for browser and mobile. Check it out at https://github.com/tangrams https://github.com/tangrams Also, there was a great interactive style editor (https://github.com/tangrams/tangram-play https://github.com/tangrams/tangram-play), although it seems the demo site is broken now :-(
  - peatmoss 8y ago
    RIP Mapzen. I loved how much much you all were contributing to the open source web space.
  - skate22 8y ago
    Any chance mapzen would open source the code used to make metro extracts? The formats your team had to offer were so much nicer than working with raw OSM data
    - zerebubuth 8y ago
      I'm glad you found them useful! The code which made all the metro extracts was embedded as a Chef recipe, although I'm sure you could just extract the bits which do stuff from the Chef wrappers: https://github.com/mapzen/chef-metroextractor https://github.com/mapzen/chef-metroextractor
bangonkeyboard 8y ago
What are the stumbling blocks to self-hosting Mapbox?
- butz 8y ago
  None. Start here: https://openmaptiles.com/server/ https://openmaptiles.com/server/
baby 8y ago
We're using it for https://www.citymayor.co https://www.citymayor.co and it is getting expensive quite quickly (.5 for 1k page views), but the API is really good and the themes are really pretty as well. I've tried playing with open street map directly to create a theme and it was quite a mess.
- lukeqsee 8y ago
  Check out one of the services that base their data on OpenStreetMap. My company (https://stadiamaps.com https://stadiamaps.com) does that. OpenMapTiles (https://openmaptiles.org https://openmaptiles.org) sells vector tiles you can use. There a many more over at https://switch2osm.org/providers/ https://switch2osm.org/providers/.
jordigh 8y ago
I generally like Mapbox but I've had some problems with the quality of their geocoding and still would get better results from Google's geocoding. It was a pretty niche thing, though: mapbox doesn't have as many European postcodes, but Europeans in several countries don't really treat postcodes with much respect to begin with. In particular, mapbox has no Eircodes whatsoever.
- juliangoldsmith 8y ago
  The quality of OpenAddresses' geocoding (which, I'd imagine, Mapbox uses) seems to be a bit spotty here in the United States as well. Google's entire advantage here is the amount of resources they've poured into their data; nobody else has been able to match it so far. EDIT: After doing a bit of poking and prodding, it does seem to be a lot better than it used to be.
solipsism 8y ago
"Every time you touch the map, the map is learning," Gundersen says. "It's that flywheel." Curious quote. A flywheel stores energy. What does that have to do with a system learning as it's used? Also curious phrasing. "That flywheel"? Which flywheel?
- napoleond 8y ago
  I suspect it is a reference to "The Flywheel Effect" espoused by business author Jim Collins: https://www.jimcollins.com/concepts/the-flywheel.html https://www.jimcollins.com/concepts/the-flywheel.html I'm not an expert, and I'm not sure that this in fact a valid interpretation of that concept, but I know that it's a popular concept in certain business circles.
  - cpeterso 8y ago
    Amazon is also keen on the "flywheel" terminology: http://www.samseely.com/blog/2016/5/2/the-amazon-flywheel-part-1 http://www.samseely.com/blog/2016/5/2/the-amazon-flywheel-pa...
yosito 8y ago
Mapbox has some excellent software. And they're hiring. Sadly, they're moving away from remote work, which probably eliminates a lot of good talent who are also heavy map users.
ape4 8y ago
Am I crazy, I can't see a live demo page.
- efraim 8y ago
  You're not crazy. Go to products -> maps, click on one of the themes, click on View live map. Like this one for example https://www.mapbox.com/maps/streets/ https://www.mapbox.com/maps/streets/ It's like they don't want to show it.
  - EQmapbox 8y ago
    I love this thread. I have not one but two tickets asking we elevate the actual maps - I'm going to tap it again! Stay tuned for a nice redesign shortly that hopefully pulls them front and center. Note - I work at Mapbox.
  - kalleboo 8y ago
    Damn it's actually kind of breathtaking how responsive and smooth the zooming and scrolling is on that compared to Google Maps. Also since I'm a Safari user I figured I'd try Google Maps in Chrome as well to see if Google Maps' lag was due to Safari and nope, Chrome is actually way laggier than Safari.
xando 8y ago
Speaking from the perspective of someone who did some amount of web stuff with maps. Mapbox feels really good. API, docs and rendering performance all of this is really good. Although it's not an obvious choice if you are starting fresh. I personally find the pricing impossible to digest. Probably sounds reasonable for well-founded startups from developed countries. If your doing a bootstrapped product and can't pay 500$ it's not for you. Google Maps. the v3 it's here for a while. The API feels good, but not great, Stack Overflow is your documentation. Rendering performance is bad, rendering performance with (many) markers without some hacks is terrible, rendering performance on mobile is even worse. I'm trying to figure out what new the pricing means for me. Leaflet and OpenStreetMap look like a better choice for all hobby projects and small product from now on.
lukeqsee 8y ago
There are more alternatives to Google & Mapbox that mostly use OpenStreetMap as a backing data source: https://openmaptiles.org (only map tiles) https://stadiamaps.com (map tiles, static maps & routing) https://www.thunderforest.com (only maps) https://geocoder.opencagedata.com (only geocoding) https://geocode.earth (only geocoding) A laundry listing: https://switch2osm.org/providers/ https://switch2osm.org/providers/ Tile providers are very thankful for the excellent rendering libraries built by Mapbox, Mapzen, and the Leaflet project. Most maps either use Leaflet.js or MapBox GL JS (open source) for their rendering agent, now that Mapzen is defunct (although their rendering library, tangrams, is now open source). (I am a co-founder of Stadia Maps.)
- mwj 8y ago
  Hmmm I evaluated a lot of those (mainly OSM-based) geocoders recently. Unfortunately the quality of results is orders of magnitude worse than Google. The only ones that even came close were Mapbox, Mapquest and Here.
  - freyfogle 8y ago
    Hi, co-founder of OpenCage here. It depends heavily on what your use case is: forward or reverse, which part of the world, what level of granularity, etc. Google offers a great geocoding service, no doubt. But you also have to pay their price, and obey their terms and conditions. Their great service is overkill for many very common use cases, at least those that we see from our customers. Anyone who wants to try us out, our demo page is here: https://geocoder.opencagedata.com/demo https://geocoder.opencagedata.com/demo
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - andrei_says_ 8y ago
    I’m curious, how close? Would you consider mapbox instead of google maps? In what cases is it not close enough?
- 8y ago
Quanttek 8y ago
> Widespread adoption has other benefits. Mapbox doesn't need to send out pricey cars or satellites in space to map the world. "Map data is not like food, air, water that's just around. It takes active work to make it," says Young Hahn, Mapbox's CTO. Whenever someone opens a Mapbox map, that person's phone or computer sends three pieces of anonymous data back to the company: longitude, latitude and a time stamp. These billions of data points constantly improve Mapbox's real-time plug-and-play map of the world. "Every time you touch the map, the map is learning," Gundersen says. "It's that flywheel." What do they mean by that?
- schoen 8y ago
  It's strange to say that food is "just around" in urbanized industrial society. Maybe for hunter-gatherers...
- mtmail 8y ago
  The Mapbox map is tracking its users. Based on that location data they can derive unmapped roads, turning restrictions, traffic jams (and time-of-day congestion), construction. And feeding other machine learning system to improve the data set. In a recent press release they talk about deployed sensors, no longer users. Google Maps knows when rush hour at your local gym is, Mapbox wants the same. It's a big selling point to their investors because staff editing/fixing the map doesn't scale well.
  - jstandard 8y ago
    Any ideas about how they're solving the need to constantly update meta data like speed limits or POI names? This is the part of the OSM data set I found particularly weak when comparing vs. Google Maps.
    - mtmail 8y ago
      For those I assume licensing data from commercial providers. For Germany geocoding for example Mapbox uses government data, not OpenStreetMap (found out reading a github issue when another user asked why an OSM change wasn't reflected). https://www.mapillary.com/imagery https://www.mapillary.com/imagery is using image recognition for traffic signs and lists Mapbox as a user.
dabernathy89 8y ago
Since Google Maps jacked up their prices a few days ago, I've been exploring alternatives, including Mapbox. Unfortunately Mapbox is also very steep for a solo developer developer who wants to build a side project - at least if it's considered 'commercial'. $500 / month for only 250 users, and no way to plan beyond that without inquiring with them about an "enterprise" plan. Also, if anyone from Mapbox is reading this, you need to be more clear about what is considered "commercial". At the top of the pricing page you define a commercial app as: Paid web app or website (fee or subscription) Private web app or website with restricted access Asset tracking app or website to monitor people or things But then lower down on the page, you seem to indicate a more permissive definition: If your app is for internal business use by employees, or if it is not accessible or functional for members of the general public then we consider that a Commercial app. Even with these two definitions, it's not clear how this pricing works for freemium websites or websites paid for by advertising. There are some other alternatives that are more truly "pay as you go" or have affordable tiers for commercial apps: TomTom - https://developer.tomtom.com/store/maps-api https://developer.tomtom.com/store/maps-api MapQuest - https://developer.mapquest.com/plans https://developer.mapquest.com/plans Stadia Maps - https://stadiamaps.com/ https://stadiamaps.com/ There is also MapFit, which says it has "Clear pricing that scales with you" but doesn't actually explain any of their pricing: https://mapfit.com/pricing https://mapfit.com/pricing If anyone else has good alternatives that are affordable for solo devs, especially ones with good alternatives to the Google Maps Places API, I'd love to hear about them.
- lukeqsee 8y ago
  We don't have Places API support, but we definitely are aiming for products from solo devs and smaller businesses at Stadia Maps. We have a few suggestions for places to look when our services have a hole. For instance, Foursquare has a pretty good places API we've used before.
  - dabernathy89 8y ago
    Ah thanks for mentioning Foursquare - I meant to list it. It's another one that has a huge upfront cost for solo devs building a commercial app ($600 / month).
iagovar 8y ago
How does mapbox compare to carto.com ?
- lukeqsee 8y ago
  Carto offers many of the same services, but their focus is more on the ability to analyze vs display data. Their big sales push is "Location Intelligence" vs simply providing various standard geoservices. I consider Carto and Mapbox to be tangential services in many respects.
- mtmail 8y ago
  Carto is using Mapbox technology in the background. This blog posts explains some differentiation on top https://carto.com/blog/partnering-with-mapbox/ https://carto.com/blog/partnering-with-mapbox/
  - klokantech 8y ago
    Carto uses geocoding and routing services from Mapbox - but their vector and raster map tiles are powered by OpenMapTiles. See: https://blog.klokantech.com/2018/05/openmaptiles-gives-you-freedom-of-sdks.html https://blog.klokantech.com/2018/05/openmaptiles-gives-you-f...
kirchhoff 8y ago
The era of mashups / cool web projects using Google Maps has ended. Their recent 28x price change (from $0.50 / 1000 views to $14 per 1000) has been cleverly disguised by the simultaneous rebranding to the "Google Maps Platform".
- edgarvaldes 8y ago
  I wonder how many of the projects showcased over googlemapsmania.blogspot.com are just going to close the door.
rglover 8y ago
Mapbox is a better product and a better development experience. It's also a better styling experience. It's a great case study on the pursuit of quality as a way to draw people in.
tboyd47 8y ago
More crucially, they are winning over executives of medium-to-large internet businesses with superior sales and marketing. Individual engineers at these places do not have the power to make decisions about which map software to use, which are often six- or seven-figure contracts. Mapbox offers a service that is comparable to Google Maps in terms of price, quality and flexibility. From a technical standpoint, there are pros and cons to both services; Mapbox's toolkit is more modern than Google, which means documentation is a pro for Mapbox but legacy browser support is a con (though it's just a minor annoyance). Where they far outstrip Google is in sales and customer support. Google Maps won't bat an eye for you, even if you're paying them millions of dollars a year. The Mapbox team, in contrast, will devote developer time to answering your questions, respond to GitHub issues for you in a timely manner, and even create new plugins and repos if you have a legitimate need. That is their big advantage and that is what is driving adoption. Source: I was employed at a medium-sized internet publisher, and tasked with evaluating Mapbox to replace Google Maps, was a primary developer working on the switch-over, and even wrote a blog post about the experience [0]. They even invited me to their office to work with them for a day (which, regrettably, I wasn't able to follow up on). [0]: https://blog.rentpathcode.com/webpack-progressive-enhancement-for-humans-e2af9a4fef9f https://blog.rentpathcode.com/webpack-progressive-enhancemen...
- jstandard 8y ago
  What are your main use cases?
  - tboyd47 8y ago
    Showing apartment listings and houses on desktop and mobile web.
- empath75 8y ago
  Papa johns was (is?) paying for mapquest purely for the privilege of calling up the noc every few days when their servers crashed. At least it felt like that when I worked in the noc.
  - 8y ago
nik736 8y ago
We started switching to MapBox some weeks ago, really liking it so far. There are some quirks but one can see that a lot of things are happening at a fast pace.
nsx147 8y ago
A bit tangential, but I have been unable to find a price-friendly static maps provider for embedding in PDF and print. Anyone have suggestions?
- lukeqsee 8y ago
  We would be happy to support this type of application! Please email me at luke@stadiamaps.com if you'd like more information pertaining to your use-case. https://stadiamaps.com https://stadiamaps.com
wodenokoto 8y ago
How does it handle Japanese addresses? I have a messy address list I would like to geocode, but not sure where to turn

336 points by coloneltcb 8y ago

Mapbox has some really cool tech. They care a lot about rendering performance and do a lot of open-source work in the GPU vector graphics space; e.g. https://github.com/mapbox/mapbox-gl-js https://github.com/mapbox/mapbox-gl-js I've always enjoyed chatting with their engineers about vector graphics stuff. :)

marricks 8y ago

Surprising to see competition in a space that is so dominated by Google. I hoped it’d be some open source endeavor, but seeing the link was Forbes I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up... that said competition and options is good!

dmitriid 8y ago
It's not surprising at all. Google have essentially built a moat that is very hard to cross: https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat
- tallytalwar 8y ago
  Specific map rendering projects from mapzen: Web Renderer: https://github.com/tangrams/tangram https://github.com/tangrams/tangram Native/Mobile Renderer: https://github.com/tangrams/tangram-es https://github.com/tangrams/tangram-es Native renderer can be accessed for android through gradle, ios through cocoapods and even available on raspberry pi. Scene file documentation: https://github.com/tangrams/tangram-docs https://github.com/tangrams/tangram-docs https://mapzen.com/documentation/tangram/ https://mapzen.com/documentation/tangram/ (still seems to work :D) Scene file authoring tool: https://github.com/tangrams/tangram-play https://github.com/tangrams/tangram-play Which continues to live at http://tangram.city/play/ http://tangram.city/play/ One of the great features of tangram is to embed any glsl shader in the scene file, which gets injected during rendering and "transforms" the map rendering and the map experience to a all new level, giving the some great flexibility cartographer/designer/developer will like. As an example check this demo "tron" scene: https://tangrams.github.io/tron-style/#15/37.7926/-122.4003 https://tangrams.github.io/tron-style/#15/37.7926/-122.4003 (source: https://github.com/tangrams/tron-style https://github.com/tangrams/tron-style) Tangram had some great consumer base including this amazing project called StreetComplete (https://github.com/westnordost/StreetComplete/ https://github.com/westnordost/StreetComplete/). Check it out and use it to improve osm street data. Also mapzen's geocode engine Pelias, continues to live as geocode.earch, which it out at https://geocode.earth/ https://geocode.earth/. Disclamer, I used to work for mapzen on the tangram-es (native rendering) project and still supporting the project in the open source world (along with other tangram-es developers). If anyone interested has any questions, you can contact me @tallytalwar on twitter.
arsey 8y ago
Much of the data they use is open source, coming from OpenStreetMap.
dougmccune 8y ago
A huge amount of Mapbox's tech is open source, including the entirety of their WebGL rendering engine. They rely heavily on OpenStreetMap, which is all open data.
zerebubuth 8y ago
Mapzen, a now sadly defunct mapping startup, released all of its software open-source, including WebGL mobile and browser SDKs, map tile rendering, search and routing. Take a look at: https://github.com/tangrams/ https://github.com/tangrams/ https://github.com/tilezen/ https://github.com/tilezen/ https://github.com/valhalla/ https://github.com/valhalla/ https://github.com/pelias/ https://github.com/pelias/ (Full disclosure: used to work at Mapzen)

valar_m 8y ago

I have no evidence to support it, but this article feels like bought and paid for PR.

tarr11 8y ago
Because it's in Forbes?
- marnett 8y ago
  Native advertising.
- maxerickson 8y ago
  forbes.com/sites might as well be wordpress.com, it's just some blog. Pretty amazing how little such a big brand is actually worth.
  - koboll 8y ago
    Did you miss "This story appears in the May 31, 2018 issue of Forbes" below the byline of this article?
  - zymhan 8y ago
    Note that the author is actually a Forbes Staff member. It's not _just_ a blog post. But in general, definitely look closely at the forbes.com/sites articles.
ropeadopepope 8y ago
All media is bought and paid for PR. The only question is who's paying for it and why. That's not necessarily a bad thing, either. It's just the way it is.
- jefurii 8y ago
  I wouldn't say that all media is PR specifically, but it's true that all media is bought and paid for by somebody. It might be a giant corporation paying a mechanical turk to write what they want. It might be somebody with the luxury of taking their own time to write. It might be a professional journalist working for a publication that sells ad space to pay its bills, and which doesn't want to piss off ad buyers.

chrishynes 8y ago

Not so surprising after Google's recent pricing changes. They reduced the free tier by an order of magnitude and 10xed prices. Google maps is no longer good for hobby projects as the free tier is so low. It's like they're trying to drive away everybody but but big enterprise shops.

wheaties 8y ago
That's probably a good business strategy for the future of Maps. The fewer clients you have, the more focused you can be in terms of product development and pricing. This is true in many businesses, actually.
- Retric 8y ago
  It's risky to leave customers out that will feed your competition.
  - csallen 8y ago
    Every business decision carries risk. The question is whether or not the risk is acceptable. If you don't want to serve any customers making under $10M, then other companies serving those customers are not your competition. At least not today. Is there a risk they might take their broader customer base and use it to compete with you upmarket some day? Yes. But that's why you do things like build a brand, relationships, technologies, and other competitive advantages within your niche. Fancy steakhouses generally don't worry about McDonald's. (Not that this is a perfect analogy to Google vs MapBox. Just speaking generally here in response to your general point.)
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
donkeyd 8y ago
Maybe they are. There's a huge difference in approach between the two. With enterprise customers, customer support will be very different for example.

bazizbaziz 8y ago

Last I checked, MapBox's WebGL based vector tile renderer was a cut above the rest. For simple mapping, Google's stuff may cut it, but MapBox has the ability to draw complex vector polygons over a wide area that render/zoom/scroll fast and provide a nice experience. This is pretty important if you want to provide fine grained analysis of geographic areas. If you wanted this on GMaps, you were stuck rendering all your vectors to image tiles, hugely increasing the size. MapBox's vector support made this very easy! It may be that Google/free options have caught up in this space, but I haven't re-evaluated in a few years. I think MapBox could also be a winner in the GIS space as the GIS options have not made the most graceful move to the web.

zerebubuth 8y ago
Mapzen, a now sadly defunct mapping startup, also had an awesome (if I say so myself - I used to work there, but not on that team) vector tile renderer for browser and mobile. Check it out at https://github.com/tangrams https://github.com/tangrams Also, there was a great interactive style editor (https://github.com/tangrams/tangram-play https://github.com/tangrams/tangram-play), although it seems the demo site is broken now :-(
- peatmoss 8y ago
  RIP Mapzen. I loved how much much you all were contributing to the open source web space.
- skate22 8y ago
  Any chance mapzen would open source the code used to make metro extracts? The formats your team had to offer were so much nicer than working with raw OSM data
  - zerebubuth 8y ago
    I'm glad you found them useful! The code which made all the metro extracts was embedded as a Chef recipe, although I'm sure you could just extract the bits which do stuff from the Chef wrappers: https://github.com/mapzen/chef-metroextractor https://github.com/mapzen/chef-metroextractor

bangonkeyboard 8y ago

What are the stumbling blocks to self-hosting Mapbox?

butz 8y ago
None. Start here: https://openmaptiles.com/server/ https://openmaptiles.com/server/

baby 8y ago

We're using it for https://www.citymayor.co https://www.citymayor.co and it is getting expensive quite quickly (.5 for 1k page views), but the API is really good and the themes are really pretty as well. I've tried playing with open street map directly to create a theme and it was quite a mess.

lukeqsee 8y ago
Check out one of the services that base their data on OpenStreetMap. My company (https://stadiamaps.com https://stadiamaps.com) does that. OpenMapTiles (https://openmaptiles.org https://openmaptiles.org) sells vector tiles you can use. There a many more over at https://switch2osm.org/providers/ https://switch2osm.org/providers/.

jordigh 8y ago

I generally like Mapbox but I've had some problems with the quality of their geocoding and still would get better results from Google's geocoding. It was a pretty niche thing, though: mapbox doesn't have as many European postcodes, but Europeans in several countries don't really treat postcodes with much respect to begin with. In particular, mapbox has no Eircodes whatsoever.

juliangoldsmith 8y ago
The quality of OpenAddresses' geocoding (which, I'd imagine, Mapbox uses) seems to be a bit spotty here in the United States as well. Google's entire advantage here is the amount of resources they've poured into their data; nobody else has been able to match it so far. EDIT: After doing a bit of poking and prodding, it does seem to be a lot better than it used to be.

solipsism 8y ago

"Every time you touch the map, the map is learning," Gundersen says. "It's that flywheel." Curious quote. A flywheel stores energy. What does that have to do with a system learning as it's used? Also curious phrasing. "That flywheel"? Which flywheel?

napoleond 8y ago
I suspect it is a reference to "The Flywheel Effect" espoused by business author Jim Collins: https://www.jimcollins.com/concepts/the-flywheel.html https://www.jimcollins.com/concepts/the-flywheel.html I'm not an expert, and I'm not sure that this in fact a valid interpretation of that concept, but I know that it's a popular concept in certain business circles.
- cpeterso 8y ago
  Amazon is also keen on the "flywheel" terminology: http://www.samseely.com/blog/2016/5/2/the-amazon-flywheel-part-1 http://www.samseely.com/blog/2016/5/2/the-amazon-flywheel-pa...

yosito 8y ago

Mapbox has some excellent software. And they're hiring. Sadly, they're moving away from remote work, which probably eliminates a lot of good talent who are also heavy map users.

ape4 8y ago

Am I crazy, I can't see a live demo page.

efraim 8y ago
You're not crazy. Go to products -> maps, click on one of the themes, click on View live map. Like this one for example https://www.mapbox.com/maps/streets/ https://www.mapbox.com/maps/streets/ It's like they don't want to show it.
- EQmapbox 8y ago
  I love this thread. I have not one but two tickets asking we elevate the actual maps - I'm going to tap it again! Stay tuned for a nice redesign shortly that hopefully pulls them front and center. Note - I work at Mapbox.
- kalleboo 8y ago
  Damn it's actually kind of breathtaking how responsive and smooth the zooming and scrolling is on that compared to Google Maps. Also since I'm a Safari user I figured I'd try Google Maps in Chrome as well to see if Google Maps' lag was due to Safari and nope, Chrome is actually way laggier than Safari.

xando 8y ago

Speaking from the perspective of someone who did some amount of web stuff with maps. Mapbox feels really good. API, docs and rendering performance all of this is really good. Although it's not an obvious choice if you are starting fresh. I personally find the pricing impossible to digest. Probably sounds reasonable for well-founded startups from developed countries. If your doing a bootstrapped product and can't pay 500$ it's not for you. Google Maps. the v3 it's here for a while. The API feels good, but not great, Stack Overflow is your documentation. Rendering performance is bad, rendering performance with (many) markers without some hacks is terrible, rendering performance on mobile is even worse. I'm trying to figure out what new the pricing means for me. Leaflet and OpenStreetMap look like a better choice for all hobby projects and small product from now on.

lukeqsee 8y ago

There are more alternatives to Google & Mapbox that mostly use OpenStreetMap as a backing data source: https://openmaptiles.org (only map tiles) https://stadiamaps.com (map tiles, static maps & routing) https://www.thunderforest.com (only maps) https://geocoder.opencagedata.com (only geocoding) https://geocode.earth (only geocoding) A laundry listing: https://switch2osm.org/providers/ https://switch2osm.org/providers/ Tile providers are very thankful for the excellent rendering libraries built by Mapbox, Mapzen, and the Leaflet project. Most maps either use Leaflet.js or MapBox GL JS (open source) for their rendering agent, now that Mapzen is defunct (although their rendering library, tangrams, is now open source). (I am a co-founder of Stadia Maps.)

mwj 8y ago
Hmmm I evaluated a lot of those (mainly OSM-based) geocoders recently. Unfortunately the quality of results is orders of magnitude worse than Google. The only ones that even came close were Mapbox, Mapquest and Here.
- freyfogle 8y ago
  Hi, co-founder of OpenCage here. It depends heavily on what your use case is: forward or reverse, which part of the world, what level of granularity, etc. Google offers a great geocoding service, no doubt. But you also have to pay their price, and obey their terms and conditions. Their great service is overkill for many very common use cases, at least those that we see from our customers. Anyone who wants to try us out, our demo page is here: https://geocoder.opencagedata.com/demo https://geocoder.opencagedata.com/demo
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- andrei_says_ 8y ago
  I’m curious, how close? Would you consider mapbox instead of google maps? In what cases is it not close enough?
8y ago

Quanttek 8y ago

> Widespread adoption has other benefits. Mapbox doesn't need to send out pricey cars or satellites in space to map the world. "Map data is not like food, air, water that's just around. It takes active work to make it," says Young Hahn, Mapbox's CTO. Whenever someone opens a Mapbox map, that person's phone or computer sends three pieces of anonymous data back to the company: longitude, latitude and a time stamp. These billions of data points constantly improve Mapbox's real-time plug-and-play map of the world. "Every time you touch the map, the map is learning," Gundersen says. "It's that flywheel." What do they mean by that?

schoen 8y ago
It's strange to say that food is "just around" in urbanized industrial society. Maybe for hunter-gatherers...
mtmail 8y ago
The Mapbox map is tracking its users. Based on that location data they can derive unmapped roads, turning restrictions, traffic jams (and time-of-day congestion), construction. And feeding other machine learning system to improve the data set. In a recent press release they talk about deployed sensors, no longer users. Google Maps knows when rush hour at your local gym is, Mapbox wants the same. It's a big selling point to their investors because staff editing/fixing the map doesn't scale well.
- jstandard 8y ago
  Any ideas about how they're solving the need to constantly update meta data like speed limits or POI names? This is the part of the OSM data set I found particularly weak when comparing vs. Google Maps.
  - mtmail 8y ago
    For those I assume licensing data from commercial providers. For Germany geocoding for example Mapbox uses government data, not OpenStreetMap (found out reading a github issue when another user asked why an OSM change wasn't reflected). https://www.mapillary.com/imagery https://www.mapillary.com/imagery is using image recognition for traffic signs and lists Mapbox as a user.

dabernathy89 8y ago

Since Google Maps jacked up their prices a few days ago, I've been exploring alternatives, including Mapbox. Unfortunately Mapbox is also very steep for a solo developer developer who wants to build a side project - at least if it's considered 'commercial'. $500 / month for only 250 users, and no way to plan beyond that without inquiring with them about an "enterprise" plan. Also, if anyone from Mapbox is reading this, you need to be more clear about what is considered "commercial". At the top of the pricing page you define a commercial app as: Paid web app or website (fee or subscription) Private web app or website with restricted access Asset tracking app or website to monitor people or things But then lower down on the page, you seem to indicate a more permissive definition: If your app is for internal business use by employees, or if it is not accessible or functional for members of the general public then we consider that a Commercial app. Even with these two definitions, it's not clear how this pricing works for freemium websites or websites paid for by advertising. There are some other alternatives that are more truly "pay as you go" or have affordable tiers for commercial apps: TomTom - https://developer.tomtom.com/store/maps-api https://developer.tomtom.com/store/maps-api MapQuest - https://developer.mapquest.com/plans https://developer.mapquest.com/plans Stadia Maps - https://stadiamaps.com/ https://stadiamaps.com/ There is also MapFit, which says it has "Clear pricing that scales with you" but doesn't actually explain any of their pricing: https://mapfit.com/pricing https://mapfit.com/pricing If anyone else has good alternatives that are affordable for solo devs, especially ones with good alternatives to the Google Maps Places API, I'd love to hear about them.

lukeqsee 8y ago
We don't have Places API support, but we definitely are aiming for products from solo devs and smaller businesses at Stadia Maps. We have a few suggestions for places to look when our services have a hole. For instance, Foursquare has a pretty good places API we've used before.
- dabernathy89 8y ago
  Ah thanks for mentioning Foursquare - I meant to list it. It's another one that has a huge upfront cost for solo devs building a commercial app ($600 / month).

iagovar 8y ago

How does mapbox compare to carto.com ?

lukeqsee 8y ago
Carto offers many of the same services, but their focus is more on the ability to analyze vs display data. Their big sales push is "Location Intelligence" vs simply providing various standard geoservices. I consider Carto and Mapbox to be tangential services in many respects.
mtmail 8y ago
Carto is using Mapbox technology in the background. This blog posts explains some differentiation on top https://carto.com/blog/partnering-with-mapbox/ https://carto.com/blog/partnering-with-mapbox/
- klokantech 8y ago
  Carto uses geocoding and routing services from Mapbox - but their vector and raster map tiles are powered by OpenMapTiles. See: https://blog.klokantech.com/2018/05/openmaptiles-gives-you-freedom-of-sdks.html https://blog.klokantech.com/2018/05/openmaptiles-gives-you-f...

kirchhoff 8y ago

The era of mashups / cool web projects using Google Maps has ended. Their recent 28x price change (from $0.50 / 1000 views to $14 per 1000) has been cleverly disguised by the simultaneous rebranding to the "Google Maps Platform".

edgarvaldes 8y ago
I wonder how many of the projects showcased over googlemapsmania.blogspot.com are just going to close the door.

rglover 8y ago

Mapbox is a better product and a better development experience. It's also a better styling experience. It's a great case study on the pursuit of quality as a way to draw people in.

tboyd47 8y ago

More crucially, they are winning over executives of medium-to-large internet businesses with superior sales and marketing. Individual engineers at these places do not have the power to make decisions about which map software to use, which are often six- or seven-figure contracts. Mapbox offers a service that is comparable to Google Maps in terms of price, quality and flexibility. From a technical standpoint, there are pros and cons to both services; Mapbox's toolkit is more modern than Google, which means documentation is a pro for Mapbox but legacy browser support is a con (though it's just a minor annoyance). Where they far outstrip Google is in sales and customer support. Google Maps won't bat an eye for you, even if you're paying them millions of dollars a year. The Mapbox team, in contrast, will devote developer time to answering your questions, respond to GitHub issues for you in a timely manner, and even create new plugins and repos if you have a legitimate need. That is their big advantage and that is what is driving adoption. Source: I was employed at a medium-sized internet publisher, and tasked with evaluating Mapbox to replace Google Maps, was a primary developer working on the switch-over, and even wrote a blog post about the experience [0]. They even invited me to their office to work with them for a day (which, regrettably, I wasn't able to follow up on). [0]: https://blog.rentpathcode.com/webpack-progressive-enhancement-for-humans-e2af9a4fef9f https://blog.rentpathcode.com/webpack-progressive-enhancemen...

jstandard 8y ago
What are your main use cases?
- tboyd47 8y ago
  Showing apartment listings and houses on desktop and mobile web.
empath75 8y ago
Papa johns was (is?) paying for mapquest purely for the privilege of calling up the noc every few days when their servers crashed. At least it felt like that when I worked in the noc.
- 8y ago

nik736 8y ago

We started switching to MapBox some weeks ago, really liking it so far. There are some quirks but one can see that a lot of things are happening at a fast pace.

nsx147 8y ago

A bit tangential, but I have been unable to find a price-friendly static maps provider for embedding in PDF and print. Anyone have suggestions?

lukeqsee 8y ago
We would be happy to support this type of application! Please email me at luke@stadiamaps.com if you'd like more information pertaining to your use-case. https://stadiamaps.com https://stadiamaps.com

wodenokoto 8y ago

How does it handle Japanese addresses? I have a messy address list I would like to geocode, but not sure where to turn