4 ms·
I used to work for TomTom and they run a live-traffic analysis service to help them with taking current traffic into account with route planning. They buy ano
by mtrimpe 13y ago
I used to work for TomTom and they run a live-traffic analysis service to help them with taking current traffic into account with route planning.
They buy anonymized live location data from telcos for that, called probes, which go for about $1 per year.
Then a few years after Android started Google suddenly came out with a live traffic service with similar resolution for free.
I already had a pretty strong suspicion of what their cheap source of probes was :)
- groupthinker 13y agoFreight fleets, mostly.
- jrockway 13y agoThere was no need to suspect, the Maps team published a blog post about how they get traffic information: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/bright-side-of-sitting-in-traffic.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/bright-side-of-sittin...