OpenStreetMap: Artists vs Merchants

Note:  This is the first of two posts, both coming out of the recent discussion about whether OpenStreetMap should eliminate the Share Alike clause in the license. Alex Barth started all that with his post. I won’t re-hash Alex’s argument but you can (and should) read it. 

Management guru Peter Drucker observed that most of life’s arguments result from the inability of the parties concerned to agree on what exactly they were arguing about. I find that that wisdom holds pretty consistently, and is certainly applicable to the comments and arguments spawned by Alex Barth’s post on the need for OpenStreetMap to drop the Share Alike clause of the contract.

The OSM community is roughly divided into two groups. They are:

  1. Those that believe that the important thing about OSM is the act of creating the map.  The community that comes together to build an open source product that can be shared and built further by that community.  They favor hand-entered data, distrust corporate motives regarding, value community involvement and consider beer drinking an essential ingredient of map-making. I’ll call this group The Artists.
  2. The MerchantsThose that believe that the important thing about OSM is getting the map done. The process of getting that map done is less important than the act of completion; of getting to a usable, open-source map that is free to use and free of byzantine license restrictions associated with commercial maps. They like bulk data imports, especially if they can drink beer while the data is uploading. I’ll call this group The Merchants.

Much of the raging that goes on inside the OSM community is between these groups, always at odds because they fundamentally don’t agree on The Important Thing about OSM. The comments from one side sail harmlessly past the other without any impact and certainly no changing of minds. At least they can agree on the beer.

One group isn’t right and the other wrong. After all, there’s no authority within OSM to make that sort of statement.  They just are, and from what I can tell will continue to be. None of that impacts Alex’s argument, but it helps to categorize the responses. For the record, I am in the Merchant camp and the following comes from that perspective.  If you are an Artist, my rationale won’t make sense.

There is actually a third group: Those that couldn’t care less.  They signed up and contributed because it sounded fun, but really have no opinion.  I don’t know what percentage of OSM users this represents but if you estimate it by the number of members that don’t vote for OSMF directors, I’d say it is the biggest group of the three.

Author’s note:  I have been an OSM member since 2006, although my contributions are spasmodic and a bit of a random walk. I have worked with two organizations that have worked on commercial applications of OSM (Cloudmade and MapBox) and have talked to just about every major internet player interested in mapping about their opinions of the project.  I  subscribe to the legal-talk forum because I believe that self-flagellation is purifying for the soul. 

Nokia HERE accelerates into a dead end

News out of Nokia yesterday was that HERE CEO, Michael Halbherr would be leaving to pursue “entrepreneurial activities”.  It is sad that the official press release is usually the least credible.  A more likely explanation is that Halbherr left due to disagreement with new Nokia chief Rajeev Suri over the direction of HERE. Specifically, it sounds like Michael wanted to push HERE into new consumer markets while Suri wanted to retrench and focus on traditional NAVTEQ markets, especially automotive.

Given HERE’s lack of profitability and the uncertainty of a consumer market dominated by Google Maps, Suri’s position sounds reasonable. HERE can focus on what they know, sell to a market they dominate and differentiate by pushing into high accuracy maps that will be needed for ADAS and self-driving cars. The other path involves competing with a mapping behemoth with amazing capabilities and the rather unpleasant habit of giving all the resulting maps away for free. Good move, right?

Wrong. If that’s the plan, Nokia is driving into a dead end alley.  When they get to the high accuracy automotive mapping nirvana they hope will save them, they’ll find that Google is already there with better data and a better business model.  What do you think all those StreetView cars are collecting? They won’t have the business model to compete there.  Their automotive customers are slowly bowing to the inevitable loss of control of the driver experience and HERE will see customers move away and margins drop.  And they won’t be able to move anywhere else. Open mapping sources will have taken the consumer business and be closing the gap in auto as well.

HERE will look better in the short term (focus, profits) but will die in the longer term. The least they could do is to change the name back to NAVTEQ 2.0 so we don’t have to call it by the awful HERE name.

Maps aren’t just about accurate descriptions of physical space. Not anymore. Maps are just a template for displaying data and increasingly for collecting information about those places and how people move through them. I thought that was where HERE was going with recent acquisitions of Medio and Desti. Their reach though Yahoo!, Amazon, Microsoft and others gives them hundreds of millions of users with data to feed that engine.

 

 

My next ride: Uber

 

Uber logoThe news from here is that I am starting something new. I am psyched to be joining Uber, working  in Business Development/Partnerships, focused on creating and managing partnerships with geospatial content & technology suppliers worldwide.

Uber has a vision for changing the way people move around. At the core of that vision is a clear understanding of location and place; of understanding where things are and how to optimize the logistics of transportation.  And that means maps and geospatial data.  Uber’s focus on maps and geospatial analysis to solve these problems is a huge part of what attracted me to the company and the position.  I’m looking forward to working with the team there.

This means that I’ll be shutting down Prioleau Advisors.  I’ve been doing this for six years…about five years and six months longer than I thought when I started.  I started in 2009 when location was just starting to have an impact on mobile applications. It  has been a great experience, giving me the chance to look at many aspects of the broader location business.  The technology has evolved and as it has, so have the businesses and opportunities. That’s made it a great place to focus. More importantly, I’ve had a chance to talk to, meet with and work for many of the extraordinary people who make up this business.  To those who have supported me in the past six years, a heartfelt thanks.  The experience exceeded my expectations.

The great thing about this is that it isn’t a goodbye.  In my new role, I’ll continue to be deeply involved in the geo world, albeit from a different angle.  This’ll be fun.

 

 

Can HERE really support Non-Automotive LBS?

HERE-MapsToday the sales of Nokia’s HERE division was officially announced ending a long running debate over who would buy them.  The sale has been well covered by other folks.  I’d recommend GPS Business News, Dominique Bonte of ABI and the official press release but I am sure I am missing some other insightful commentary.

There are a number of interesting details that have come out in the news. I’ve written on some of them in the past. The one I am still trying to wrap my head around is how HERE will continue to support the non-automotive mapping applications. I don’t think they can do both HD Auto maps and maintain their position in non-automotive markets.

Continue reading Can HERE really support Non-Automotive LBS?

There goes HERE

HereAlthough official announcements are not out, it sounds like the German Auto alliance formed between BMW, Daimler and Audi have won the bidding to Nokia’s HERE business.  The reported price is €2.5B ($2.7B). Despite an active rumor mill, it’s not clear how spirited the bidding was or whether the German consortium ever had much competition other than from private equity companies.

There’s lots still to be learned about the deal but here are few things that I will be watching for:

Continue reading There goes HERE

Happy Birthday GPS

The Global Positioning System turns 2o years old today.  On July 17, 1995 GPS was declared fully operational, marking its official start as a positioning utility, provided free of charge by the US Government. Fourteen days later, on August 1, 1995, I started work at Trimble Navigation, running marketing for the OEM Division, my first day in my first job in the location business.

The “birthday” of GPS is somewhat misleading.  GPS satellites had been deployed since 1978, but the constellation had not been fully populated or fully operational. By 1995, there was already a growing industry in surveying, marine and military. Trimble was a public company, having IPOed largely on the strength of military demand from the first Gulf war. The OEM division at Trimble was pioneering a relatively new concept:  that there would be a business selling embedded GPS receivers into all manner of devices on an OEM basis.

Continue reading Happy Birthday GPS

Timing. Why the Mapbox raise is important now.

SatelliteMapbox announced today that they’ve just raised $52.55 million in a Series B round. That gives the company the fuel to continue building out their platform. The investors come with great backgrounds to feed into the growth of the company. But I want to talk about timing.

This round comes at craziest time I have ever seen in the mapping sector, in fact the whole location sector. Every day new bidders surface for Nokia HERE. The investor boards on TomTom are burning up with a knock-on effect. All of this puts a lot of focus on OpenStreetMap, and a lot of focus now on Mapbox, a huge supporter of OSM and user of OSM data.
Continue reading Timing. Why the Mapbox raise is important now.

2007 Redux? Mapping back in play

Screen Shot 2015-05-10 at 8.43.15 AMBuying and selling map companies is back in the news so I am back on Bloomberg.  I really enjoyed this interview with Emily Chang and Cory Johnson on Bloomberg West.  We covered a lot of ground and they had very good questions.  My reference in the title refers to the year both major map companies were acquired, NAVTEQ by Nokia and TeleAtlas by TomTom.  My prediction for 2015 (made and witnessed in January) was that 2015 would be a repeat of 2007; both HERE and TomTom Licensing would turn over again.  I have high confidence that I will be at least half right and there’s a good chance I will be 100% right. Continue reading 2007 Redux? Mapping back in play

Is this the start of a mapping war?

Bloomberg West 030415I was on Bloomberg West on March 4, 2015, the day after the acquisition of deCarta by Uber hit the news.  Cory Johnson’s opening question (cut off in the video) was “Is this the start of a mapping war?”.  It’s a good question and provoked a (hopefully) interesting discussion.

Outside of personal interest (I was employed at deCarta six years ago), the two things that interest me about this deal are that Uber didn’t think that they could differentiate their offering in the way they wanted by using a consumer-oriented map API from Google and that owning the location stack is key to capturing user behavior data.   Continue reading Is this the start of a mapping war?

Why Uber bought deCarta


UberCarta

Big news for the day in the geo-world:  Uber bought deCarta, the long-time LBS platform company that at times powered the likes of Google, Yahoo!, NIM, TeleNav, TomTom and many more.   In their statement, Uber states that they “will continue to fine-tune our products and services that rely on maps — for example UberPOOL, the way we compute ETAs [estimated times of arrival], and others — and make the Uber experience even better for our users.”  This is also the first announced acquisition by Uber.  Terms were not announced but it is suspected that Uber’s war chest of $5.9B raised remains largely intact.

(Disclaimer:  I worked at deCarta six years ago and am a shareholder under non-disclosure.  Sorry, no secrets here.) Continue reading Why Uber bought deCarta