7 ms·

They pretty much lost because free (subsidized) alternatives like Google Maps became available, pretty much the same story as Netscape. It probably didn't help

by dtech 4y ago

They pretty much lost because free (subsidized) alternatives like Google Maps became available, pretty much the same story as Netscape. It probably didn't help that their maps were also incredibly expensive, €100-200 for western Europe in 2005 money.

wjnc 4y ago
Netscape disbanded as a company in 2003. Why is TomTom still here? I like the questions at the end of a company since a large market I work in (insurance / life insurance) is dwindling as well. What does that do with companies? How do they communicate? What happens when the inevitable shrinking sets in and your brain drain is faster than the way you shrink? Should you ever actively terminate a company and tranfer IP / assets?
- lozenge 4y ago
  Transfer to who? All the people who know how to put the assets to good use... are already employed by TomTom. As long as the company provides value to shareholders and customers, why wind it down? Not everything had to be about growth, growth, growth.
  - wjnc 4y ago
    Let me be the first to say that hardcore capitalism isn't my usual purview. And that exactly the diversity of stakeholders is why I like this question. TomTom obviously offers no value to shareholders (no dividend policy, history of losses, perhaps except those searching for volatily). It's 49% owned by the directors with a 51% float. It clearly offers some value to customers since it has revenues. However, the revenues have been falling for a decade and most auto manufacturers seem able to procure these materials in-house. It has value to 4500 employees who retain gainful employment at TomTom! But the financial metric to measure value added for those employees is lacking: TomTom is worth nearly nothing. Society would be better of 'cancelling' TomTom and letting all employees go to companies with higher added value to society. They could be teachers, nurses and researchers at companies that further the technical boundary. Instead, they are working for no value at all except their salaries. It's sad. (: Hyperbole.)
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - usrusr 4y ago
      Plenty of people working for negative value except for their salaries and whatever wins they provide company owners in the negative sum games they engage in.
    - sokoloff 4y ago
      > most auto manufacturers seem able to procure these materials in-house Most auto manufacturers go outside for nav/infotainment units from suppliers like Here, MVI, Telenav, etc. I don’t see any impenetrable barrier that TomTom couldn’t try to compete in that market (or as a data supplier to that market).
      - alFReD-NSH 4y ago
        They are in that market actually with major manufactures like BMW.
- ghshephard 4y ago
  Small Nit - Netscape was broken up into pieces and sold to Sun Microsystems and AOL in 1999 for $10B. Thank Mike Homer for the great timing and resolve to get out while the getting was still good.
  - DonHopkins 4y ago
    Selling Netscape's server group to AOL was just sadistic punishment.
    - prepend 4y ago
      And just more of AOL being really stupid. It seemed more like corporate charity.
    - mardifoufs 4y ago
      For who? Genuinely curious, I didnt even know Netscape has a server division. Was it punishment for the team working there because it broke their potential, or was it that AOL got ripped of because Netscape server tech was horrible? Late 1990s/early 2000s acquisitions just always sound so wild to me! Insanely wasteful, or just even bizarre. Tons of old/traditional corporations trying to merge/buy their way into completely unrelated markets, oe in this case cash rich new megacorps like AOL that had immense potential just squandering insane amounts of capital with almost 0 RoI. Crazy times!
      - ghshephard 4y ago
        The Netscape Server products were amazing. High performing LDAP multi-master systems years ahead of its time, a calendar and email product that we used at companies years after Netscape was no more. It was tragic that so many amazingly talented engineers ended up resting and vesting at AOL for years - but, at least they all scattered to the winds a few years after that and went to see other companies.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  > since a large market I work in (insurance / life insurance) is dwindling Out of curiosity, why is the life insurance market dwindling??
  - hellisothers 4y ago
    Less people with dependents (partners, kids)? Less people care or put thought into what happens after they die? Also anecdotally many/most peers I talk to about this say their company provides life insurance, I then point out the difference between this and actual term life insurance for when/if they change companies: “oh huh…”
    - throwaway2037 4y ago
      Most growth in insurance is coming from developing countries at this point. They still have rapid economic and population growth.
    - fennecfoxen 4y ago
      Don't forget that life insurance used to come in a different form, "whole" life insurance (instead of term life insurance) which doubles as a savings/investment vehicle. This has changed a lot: people have other alternatives that are popular (401(k)s are basically everywhere), and life insurance companies are no longer able to offer the same kind of terms, especially given the ultra-low-interest-rate environment of 2008 to present.
    - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
      This sounds like pure speculation, which is fine, and I appreciate your comment, but would also like to hear from the poster who made the original comment since he works in that industry.
      - wjnc 4y ago
        Thanks Ted. In the Netherlands it’s a combination of a few market trends. 1. A trick insurers pulled in the 90s and consumers never forgave us for (lending money in the late 90s for leveraged stock investments with massive cost loading; still ongoing litigation). 2. Mortgage rules changing making a certain type of life insurance ineligible for interest deduction (you used to be able to pay 5% interest, get that interest as income tax deductible thus returning 50+% of that interest and still get 5% interest in your deposit!) and 3. the very low interest rates making products generally less interesting. Most insurers here have closed their books, with only a few products open for sales. A few larger insurers and hedge funds are buying portfolios in order to hopefully gain benefits of scale. There’s basically two ways of making money: better investment returns usually via more risky investments and cost savings. Since many of these products stem from 70s-90s IT modernization and cost saving is a real activity.
- alFReD-NSH 4y ago
  As long as they have their B2B deals, they are gonna be around.
- scotty79 4y ago
  > Netscape disbanded as a company in 2003. Why is TomTom still here? Because they are selling raw map data to Google, Bing and Apple (maybe?).
alFReD-NSH 4y ago
Something that most commenters are missing is that TomTom's most revenue comes from B2B deals, which are mostly deals with automotive companies for car screens experience and also providing maps data for products like Bing Maps.
- scarface74 4y ago
  And most consumers would much rather have either CarPlay or Android Auto than the crappy software that is made my the manufacturers.
  - grvdrm 4y ago
    Is that true? Not saying you are wrong but is it just an anecdote? I anecdotally know lots of people that just use their car GPS and don’t bother with CarPlay/AA
    - scarface74 4y ago
      80% of new cars support CarPlay https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/29/apple-carplay-massive-success-paves-way-for-automotive-entry.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/29/apple-carplay-massive-succes... As far as I know, most cars that support CarPlay also support Android auto. I can’t imagine car manufacturers wanting to pay licensing fees to TomTom unnecessarily.
      - r-w 4y ago
        Which makes you wonder if there must be some good reason why they’re still doing it.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - Nullabillity 4y ago
      Anecdotally, people just use phone holders. I have never seen anyone use either the built-in GPS or CarPlay/AA.
colechristensen 4y ago
Free mapping existed before Google Maps. Mapping isn't the hard part or the expensive part, the hardware is. Smartphones have GPS and when people started getting smartphones, the value of having a separate navigation devices went to zero-ish unless it's built in to your car or maybe some low power thing for wilderness exploration (or having a boat or a plane or that kind of thing)
- rickdeckard 4y ago
  > Free mapping existed before Google Maps. Not sure if free mapping really existed as an accessible (mobile) product, considering that nearly everyone had to buy the mapdata from dedicated companies (Navteq and TeleAtlas dominated the market, Navteq was later acquired by Nokia, TeleAtlas by TomTom) In any case, free NAVIGATION didn't exist until Google Maps came along, completely disrupting the whole industry of "casual" Navigation solutions. Hardware wasn't even the issue, companies worked out profitable compact hardware solutions, introduced different tiers from Entry to Premium and in parallel TomTom (and Wayfinder et al) started to offer Navigation as a subscription service directly and as white-label via mobile carriers, with applications for J2ME, Windows PPC, Series60 (Nokia, Samsung,..), Symbian UIQ (Sony, Motorola). They had a robust offering, quality maps and plenty of added datasets like POI, speed-information, radar-warning,... (anyone remembers the celebrity voice packages?) Then Google opened Navigation as public beta, grabbed a huge chunk of this market and later added offline maps to grab another chunk of it (for navigation in international roaming). The quality was far below any competitor, but it was free and for occasional use totally sufficient...
  - faeriechangling 4y ago
    > In any case, free NAVIGATION didn't exist until Google Maps came along Map quest was around and popular. Google maps was better for many reasons but it really was an evolutionary product.
- prepend 4y ago
  > Free mapping existed before Google Maps. Search existed before Google as well. Free maps were very inferior to Google maps and also were a loss leader for other service that’s MapQuest was trying to sell into enterprise and stuff. Google maps was just another ad stream for Google and so was much easier to link to, embed everywhere. And had an innovative UI. Before Google cranked up their prices Google maps got embedded everywhere. This was novel and not something that Mapquest and other existing maps promoted.

by dtech 4y ago

wjnc 4y ago

Netscape disbanded as a company in 2003. Why is TomTom still here? I like the questions at the end of a company since a large market I work in (insurance / life insurance) is dwindling as well. What does that do with companies? How do they communicate? What happens when the inevitable shrinking sets in and your brain drain is faster than the way you shrink? Should you ever actively terminate a company and tranfer IP / assets?

lozenge 4y ago
Transfer to who? All the people who know how to put the assets to good use... are already employed by TomTom. As long as the company provides value to shareholders and customers, why wind it down? Not everything had to be about growth, growth, growth.
- wjnc 4y ago
  Let me be the first to say that hardcore capitalism isn't my usual purview. And that exactly the diversity of stakeholders is why I like this question. TomTom obviously offers no value to shareholders (no dividend policy, history of losses, perhaps except those searching for volatily). It's 49% owned by the directors with a 51% float. It clearly offers some value to customers since it has revenues. However, the revenues have been falling for a decade and most auto manufacturers seem able to procure these materials in-house. It has value to 4500 employees who retain gainful employment at TomTom! But the financial metric to measure value added for those employees is lacking: TomTom is worth nearly nothing. Society would be better of 'cancelling' TomTom and letting all employees go to companies with higher added value to society. They could be teachers, nurses and researchers at companies that further the technical boundary. Instead, they are working for no value at all except their salaries. It's sad. (: Hyperbole.)
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - usrusr 4y ago
    Plenty of people working for negative value except for their salaries and whatever wins they provide company owners in the negative sum games they engage in.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    > most auto manufacturers seem able to procure these materials in-house Most auto manufacturers go outside for nav/infotainment units from suppliers like Here, MVI, Telenav, etc. I don’t see any impenetrable barrier that TomTom couldn’t try to compete in that market (or as a data supplier to that market).
    - alFReD-NSH 4y ago
      They are in that market actually with major manufactures like BMW.
ghshephard 4y ago
Small Nit - Netscape was broken up into pieces and sold to Sun Microsystems and AOL in 1999 for $10B. Thank Mike Homer for the great timing and resolve to get out while the getting was still good.
- DonHopkins 4y ago
  Selling Netscape's server group to AOL was just sadistic punishment.
  - prepend 4y ago
    And just more of AOL being really stupid. It seemed more like corporate charity.
  - mardifoufs 4y ago
    For who? Genuinely curious, I didnt even know Netscape has a server division. Was it punishment for the team working there because it broke their potential, or was it that AOL got ripped of because Netscape server tech was horrible? Late 1990s/early 2000s acquisitions just always sound so wild to me! Insanely wasteful, or just even bizarre. Tons of old/traditional corporations trying to merge/buy their way into completely unrelated markets, oe in this case cash rich new megacorps like AOL that had immense potential just squandering insane amounts of capital with almost 0 RoI. Crazy times!
    - ghshephard 4y ago
      The Netscape Server products were amazing. High performing LDAP multi-master systems years ahead of its time, a calendar and email product that we used at companies years after Netscape was no more. It was tragic that so many amazingly talented engineers ended up resting and vesting at AOL for years - but, at least they all scattered to the winds a few years after that and went to see other companies.
TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
> since a large market I work in (insurance / life insurance) is dwindling Out of curiosity, why is the life insurance market dwindling??
- hellisothers 4y ago
  Less people with dependents (partners, kids)? Less people care or put thought into what happens after they die? Also anecdotally many/most peers I talk to about this say their company provides life insurance, I then point out the difference between this and actual term life insurance for when/if they change companies: “oh huh…”
  - throwaway2037 4y ago
    Most growth in insurance is coming from developing countries at this point. They still have rapid economic and population growth.
  - fennecfoxen 4y ago
    Don't forget that life insurance used to come in a different form, "whole" life insurance (instead of term life insurance) which doubles as a savings/investment vehicle. This has changed a lot: people have other alternatives that are popular (401(k)s are basically everywhere), and life insurance companies are no longer able to offer the same kind of terms, especially given the ultra-low-interest-rate environment of 2008 to present.
  - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
    This sounds like pure speculation, which is fine, and I appreciate your comment, but would also like to hear from the poster who made the original comment since he works in that industry.
    - wjnc 4y ago
      Thanks Ted. In the Netherlands it’s a combination of a few market trends. 1. A trick insurers pulled in the 90s and consumers never forgave us for (lending money in the late 90s for leveraged stock investments with massive cost loading; still ongoing litigation). 2. Mortgage rules changing making a certain type of life insurance ineligible for interest deduction (you used to be able to pay 5% interest, get that interest as income tax deductible thus returning 50+% of that interest and still get 5% interest in your deposit!) and 3. the very low interest rates making products generally less interesting. Most insurers here have closed their books, with only a few products open for sales. A few larger insurers and hedge funds are buying portfolios in order to hopefully gain benefits of scale. There’s basically two ways of making money: better investment returns usually via more risky investments and cost savings. Since many of these products stem from 70s-90s IT modernization and cost saving is a real activity.
alFReD-NSH 4y ago
As long as they have their B2B deals, they are gonna be around.
scotty79 4y ago
> Netscape disbanded as a company in 2003. Why is TomTom still here? Because they are selling raw map data to Google, Bing and Apple (maybe?).

alFReD-NSH 4y ago

Something that most commenters are missing is that TomTom's most revenue comes from B2B deals, which are mostly deals with automotive companies for car screens experience and also providing maps data for products like Bing Maps.

scarface74 4y ago
And most consumers would much rather have either CarPlay or Android Auto than the crappy software that is made my the manufacturers.
- grvdrm 4y ago
  Is that true? Not saying you are wrong but is it just an anecdote? I anecdotally know lots of people that just use their car GPS and don’t bother with CarPlay/AA
  - scarface74 4y ago
    80% of new cars support CarPlay https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/29/apple-carplay-massive-success-paves-way-for-automotive-entry.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/29/apple-carplay-massive-succes... As far as I know, most cars that support CarPlay also support Android auto. I can’t imagine car manufacturers wanting to pay licensing fees to TomTom unnecessarily.
    - r-w 4y ago
      Which makes you wonder if there must be some good reason why they’re still doing it.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Nullabillity 4y ago
    Anecdotally, people just use phone holders. I have never seen anyone use either the built-in GPS or CarPlay/AA.

colechristensen 4y ago

Free mapping existed before Google Maps. Mapping isn't the hard part or the expensive part, the hardware is. Smartphones have GPS and when people started getting smartphones, the value of having a separate navigation devices went to zero-ish unless it's built in to your car or maybe some low power thing for wilderness exploration (or having a boat or a plane or that kind of thing)

rickdeckard 4y ago
> Free mapping existed before Google Maps. Not sure if free mapping really existed as an accessible (mobile) product, considering that nearly everyone had to buy the mapdata from dedicated companies (Navteq and TeleAtlas dominated the market, Navteq was later acquired by Nokia, TeleAtlas by TomTom) In any case, free NAVIGATION didn't exist until Google Maps came along, completely disrupting the whole industry of "casual" Navigation solutions. Hardware wasn't even the issue, companies worked out profitable compact hardware solutions, introduced different tiers from Entry to Premium and in parallel TomTom (and Wayfinder et al) started to offer Navigation as a subscription service directly and as white-label via mobile carriers, with applications for J2ME, Windows PPC, Series60 (Nokia, Samsung,..), Symbian UIQ (Sony, Motorola). They had a robust offering, quality maps and plenty of added datasets like POI, speed-information, radar-warning,... (anyone remembers the celebrity voice packages?) Then Google opened Navigation as public beta, grabbed a huge chunk of this market and later added offline maps to grab another chunk of it (for navigation in international roaming). The quality was far below any competitor, but it was free and for occasional use totally sufficient...
- faeriechangling 4y ago
  > In any case, free NAVIGATION didn't exist until Google Maps came along Map quest was around and popular. Google maps was better for many reasons but it really was an evolutionary product.
prepend 4y ago
> Free mapping existed before Google Maps. Search existed before Google as well. Free maps were very inferior to Google maps and also were a loss leader for other service that’s MapQuest was trying to sell into enterprise and stuff. Google maps was just another ad stream for Google and so was much easier to link to, embed everywhere. And had an innovative UI. Before Google cranked up their prices Google maps got embedded everywhere. This was novel and not something that Mapquest and other existing maps promoted.