Why are companies defecting from Google Maps?
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| henke54 Mar 11, 2012 6:40 AM EDT |
Chris Roubis wrote:The fees to use Google Maps probably aren’t what’s starting to put off companies like Foursquare and Apple — it’s probably the ever-increasing reach of Google’s advertising efforts. Third parties may not be comfortable acting as windows for Google’s advertising platform, and that’s particularly true for firms that compete against Google in one way or another — whether that be offering location-based deals or a leading mobile platform. The upshot is that consumers can expect more and more services to gradually shift away from Google Maps towards less-encumbered alternatives like OpenStreetMap — particularly if their business interests in any way bring them into competition with Google.http://www.chrisroubis.com/2012/03/why-are-companies-defecti... |
| caitlyn Mar 11, 2012 7:24 PM EDT |
Time permitting, I definitely intend on writing up various alternatives to Google services, as in pretty much all of them. |
| Bob_Robertson Mar 12, 2012 11:50 AM EDT |
Competition drives innovation. Bringing competitors to Google to light is good for everyone, even Google users. |
| Khamul Mar 12, 2012 12:43 PM EDT |
Unfortunately, there really isn't much viable competition for Google's largest or most popular services.
1) Google Search: the only competition here I know of is Bing, and everyone knows that sucks.
2) Google Mail: the only competition I know of here is Yahoo Mail and (MS) Hotmail. Yahoo looks like it has one foot in the grave and one on a banana peel, plus their mail UI sucks. Hotmail of course sucks since it's an MS product.
3) Google Maps: Mapquest seems to be on its last legs (for good reason), and the main competition is Bing Maps, which actually (I hate to say this) is better than Google Maps in many ways. Ever try to get Google to fix anything on their maps? It took them years to actually show Louisville KY as a city, and every time I try to point out a problem (i.e., they have a business listed at a location, and there's nothing there but an empty field that you can actually see in the Street View) nothing happens.
4) Android: the only competition here is a) Blackberry which is dying and sucks anyway, b) iOS which is too rigidly controlled by Apple and doesn't allow any customization, and c) WinPhone7 (don't make me laugh). Google Docs, however, is easy: just use LibreOffice. As for their other services, what other services? Just wait a month and they'll shut it down citing insufficient usage. |
| vainrveenr Mar 13, 2012 12:19 PM EDT |
Quoting:Time permitting, I definitely intend on writing up various alternatives to Google services, as in pretty much all of them. Detractors aside, a small start in this effort is the concurrent thread OSMF and GProduct alternatives |
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