Google's Geospatial Data Rising to the Top

Google's Geospatial Data Rising to the Top
http://www.gpsworld.com/gis/google039s-geospatial-data-rising-top-9044
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Back in June 2008, Tele Atlas announced it signed a five-year contract with Google that gives Google access to Tele Atlas “maps and dynamic content in more than 200 countries around the world”.

Furthermore, the announcement state that “the agreement spans Google’s current and future map-based services and navigation offerings across mobile, online and desktop environments. These include the Google Maps and Google Earth services and mobile applications such as Google Maps for Mobile. The agreement also gives Tele Atlas access to edits for its maps from Google’s community of users, whose suggested changes can help the company further increase the quality and richness of Tele Atlas maps.”

Just last week, however, it was rumored that Google has stopped using Tele Atlas in Google Maps for the United States. Sure enough, something has changed. Go to Google Maps and/or Google Earth and zoom in on a location within the United States. The Tele Atlas copyright notation at the bottom of the map display is not there any longer. Take a look at the following map...



It’s no secret that Google has been developing its own map database. Some of you may have even seen the Google street cars running around. These are cars equipped with high tech instrumentation to collect a mind-boggling amount of data. Search for “google street car” and your search engine will reward you with a page full of photos. There are not only Google Street Cars, but also much more highly sophisticated trucks outfitted with high performance GPS, cameras and digital scanners that can collect not only imagery, but a tremendous amount of vector data.

A little background on digital map companies

Digital map data has been around the block for more than two decades with a number of different companies offering products. However, in the past several years, two have risen to the top through acquiring other companies and via organic growth; Tele Atlas and Navteq. Their rise to the top has been prominently noted due to the explosive growth of GPS Personal Navigation Devices (PNDs). Yes, every one of those Garmin, TomTom, Magellan, Mio, etc. units contains either a Tele Atlas map database or a Navteq map database. Also, every in-dash automobile navigation system contains one of the two databases also.

Of course, this duopoly and explosive PND unit sales made Navteq and Tele Atlas prime targets for MBAs who were looking to make a buck or two. They were going crazy trying to understand mapping technology and barriers to market entry. In the end, Navteq was acquired by Nokia for US$8.1B and Tele Atlas was acquired by TomTom (after a bidding war with Garmin) for 2.7B Euros. Garmin ended up signing a medium-term contract with Navteq (until 2015) to secure its map database supply.

Creating and maintaining these street-level map databases is a huge chore and part of the reason why there is still a duopoly in the map database market. The question has been “when will a third or fourth party enter the street-level map database market?”. Google is invariably mentioned in that conversation. There are also some established bit players like Automotive Navigation Data (AND) and upstarts such as Facet Technology Corp. that are looking to take a bite out of the duopoly’s dominate market share.

The fact is that it’s much easier (but still very complex) to generate a map database today than it was twenty-five years ago. When Navteq (then Karlin & Collins, Inc. according to Wikipedia) first began in the mid-80’s, they collected position data without GPS (using gyros) and annotated the positions by speaking into a voice recorder. Can you imagine the work it took to transcribe that information and turn it into a usable street map? A map database of the single city was a daunting enough task, not to mention a nationwide street-level database. Today, there is an amazing amount of publicly available GIS data (both raster and vector). One can begin generating a very good quality base map without ever leaving the office. Google has done this and they have also taken to the streets to produce a map database that can stand on its own.

Relying on the masses

In the beginning, creating a reasonably complete map database was the challenge, a huge challenge. Once introduced to the market, customers began reporting for and asking for map updates. If you’ve used a PND, you know the frustration of trying to look up a soccer field that’s not listed in the PND map database.

TomTom/Tele Atlas was first to implement a community-based map update service called Map Share. Smart concept…get your customers to report and collect data to update your map database. The idea is to record road changes using a TomTom receiver and them, at some point, connect the TomTom receiver to your home computer and share the changes with the Map Share community. TomTom launched Map Share in July 2007 and reported their one millionth update seven months later.

Road changes are only one issue with keeping map databases current. Points of Interest (POI) are a different story as businesses, especially retail, open and close on a regular basis. The leading POI database supplier in the US is infoUSA. infoUSA claims to make 20 million telephone calls each year to confirm the accuracy of their data.

Of course Google seems to be taking the same “community update” approach. Surely, there will be areas where Google’s base map isn’t as complete as Tele Atlas, but I think Google believes they can catch up fast. Whereas Tele Atlas map updates might take six months to work their way into production, Google is talking about 30 days and maybe down to a day. Also, by Google owning their own base map data, it gives them tremendous flexibility to do what they want, when they want rather than dealing with the Tele Atlas contract terms. Speaking of data ownership, once you submit an error report to Google, the data is theirs to keep. That’s their upside. Read the Google Map and Earth blog here.

Open Source?

All the geospatial data players discussed so far are commercial entities. There is always room for a Linux-type (free and open source) of player in any high tech space, right? Of course!

Introducing OpenStreetMap.

According to the Wikipedia entry, OpenStreetMap data “is published under an open content license, with the intention of promoting free use and re-distribution of the data (both commercial and non-commercial)”. Like Linux, OpenStreetMap started with a basic package and it’s up to the user community to enhance and customize it. Referring back to Wikipedia, as of March 2009, there were more than 100,000 registered users of OpenStreetMap. One commercial entity that’s using OpenStreetMap data is CloudMade. CloudMade Maps offers Google maps type of functionality. View the CloudMade blog here.

Watch out…this is going to be very interesting. The digital map database market has been simmering for awhile and ripe for action. It’s safe to say that now it’s nearing a slow boil.
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