Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and TomTom have formed a group that will release data that could enable companies to build their own maps. The Overture Maps Foundation has captured 59 million points of interest, including restaurants, landmarks, streets, and regional borders. The data can be used for free as the base layer for a new map application. The data was collected and donated to the foundation by Meta and Microsoft.
Oh boy, a Tri-opoly
@huojtkeg I still find this worrying as an OSM contributor.
Right???
Like the way to beat this isn’t to make a third locked in competitor.
Join up with osm and THAT would be a competitor
@ArbiterXero previously they did. Now there’s Overture and it’s not clear his long they will continue supporting OSM.
I’m not sure they really did.
They showed half-assed support rather than developing next next Gen capabilities and feeding their data into it to make everything open.
No they gave crumbs, and kept all their “proprietary data” to themselves.
Bing maps has tons of mineable data that wasn’t given to osm.
THAT would be the market mover.
But that data is valuable and they want to extract every dime they can, to the public’s detriment.
@ArbiterXero @InsertUser Facebook giving OSM the legal right to mass copy the PoI (point of interest) data would be a fucking game changer.
When I was on the OSMF Board, I asked our FB rep, and of course they said no.
Exactly.
Mmm, yes. The solution to giant tech companies having all the market share is for there to be a THIRD giant tech company with all the market share. I mean I guess a triopoly is better than a duopoly but it’s hardly a solution.
So a monopoly in online shopping is teaming up with a monopoly in operating and org software to fight against a monopoly in advertising and a monopoly in mobile device ecosytems.
Wonderful.
