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Sort of FYI, Google's original effort at providing their own database for map information was that Navtec would not license them the right to use map data for t
by dirtyaura 14y ago
Sort of FYI, Google's original effort at providing their own database for map information was that Navtec would not license them the right to use map data for turn-by-turn navigation.
Of course Navteq would allow them to use map data for turn-by-turn navigation, but Google didn't want to pay the price they were asking for license fees.
Earlier Navteq and Tele Atlas had a duopoli in worldwide map data - no-one else had as good coverage as they had. And they used tiered licensing structure. On lower tiers, you were allowed to display maps, but you couldn't use them for turn-by-turn navigation or for example dynamically show locations of your friends.
- ChuckMcM 14y agoActually in that particular case, according to what the employees were told at one of the TGIF events, previous deals Navtec had made with navigation device vendors precluded them from licensing Google the turn by turn rights at any price. Now that may have been a misstatement, but it was presented as a large part of the rationale for the whole project which encompassed getting rights to satellites, driving data, broadcast source locations, etc etc. Things like "we bought Keyhole and got great satellite imagery but we're forbidden from image processing that imagery into a map, so we bought a satellite and took our own damn pictures." It played well with the whole 'think bigger than that' mantra that Larry Page embodied.