5 ms·
Unholy alliance of the world’s largest and wealthiest technology companies
- rohanaed 6y agoTitle is misleading !! Article is more about Openstreetmap than any unholy alliance
- Apocryphon 6y agoIndeed, the title should be more like the article’s conclusion that it’s more of a reverse of the tragedy of the commons.
- commoner 6y agoThis article was already posted under the correct title ("OpenStreetMap is Having a Moment") a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25137235 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25137235 I get the impression that the word "unholy" is used facetiously in the article, and is not meant to be taken literally.
- tomComb 6y agoReacting just to the title, one of the reasons I admire some of those big evil tech companies is because they appear to compete really hard against each other, and mostly by creating new stuff. That compares very favorable with eg. the banks or telecoms in my country (and many others).
- Gunax 6y agoI don't think this is such a big deal. Competitors often co-operate around things that are important to the whole industry. Major banks are competitors, but if they didn't co-operate we would not be able to ACH or wire money to accounts at other banks. Ultimately it's more efficient if we all just use the same map data and do it once.
- mullingitover 6y agoMan, this is a bad take. It makes passing mention of Google, ignoring the herd of elephants in the room. Google effectively did a bunch of dumping for years to grab market share, and the second they felt like they had it locked up they started turning the screws. No mention of that. I honestly can't tell if this is astroturfing or if the author is oblivious. A bunch of companies contributing to a shared maps service is about as scary as a bunch of companies contributing to the linux kernel.
- ldng 6y agoBecause OSM does not actually need to care about Google ?
- mullingitover 6y agoPretty likely that the reason OSM is getting all this attention is because Google opened themselves to competition when they started (rationally) price gouging like there wasn't any.
- CryptoPunk 6y agoTo provide an open alternative to Google Maps' proprietary data seems pretty holy to me. The author's choice of title is odd given he acknowledges its public benefit too: "It’s the opposite of the Tragedy of the Commons — all of the private property holders, acting in their own self interest, are enriching the common resource rather than depleting it."
- nojokes 6y agoOriginal title is "OpenStreetMap is Having a Moment (The Billion Dollar Dataset Next Door)".