“Linux, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft Want to Break the Google Maps Monopoly: Overture Maps Foundation Wants to End the Oppressive Rule of the Google Maps API”, 2022-12-16 (; backlinks):
Google Maps is getting some competition. The Linux Foundation has announced Overture Maps, a “new collaborative effort to develop interoperable open map data as a shared asset that can strengthen mapping services worldwide.” It’s an open-source mapping effort that includes a list of heavy hitters: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Meta, Microsoft, and TomTom, with the foundation adding that the project is “open to all communities with a common interest in building open map data.”
The Linux Foundation has a press release about the project and a new website for the Overture Maps Foundation. The press release outlined the scope of the project, which aims to deliver:
Collaborative Map Building: Overture aims to incorporate data from multiple sources including Overture Members, civic organizations, and open data sources.
Global Entity Reference System: Overture will simplify interoperability with a system that links entities from different data sets to the same real-world entities.
Quality Assurance Processes: Overture data will undergo validation to detect map errors, breakage, and vandalism to help ensure that map data can be used in production systems.
Structured Data Schema: Overture will define and drive adoption of a common, structured, and documented data schema to create an easy-to-use ecosystem of map data.
…One of the Overture site FAQs asks about OpenStreetMap and its relationship to Overture:
Overture is a data-centric map project, not a community of individual map editors. Therefore, Overture is intended to be complementary to OSM. We combine OSM with other sources to produce new open map data sets. Overture data will be available for use by the OpenStreetMap community under compatible open data licenses. Overture members are encouraged to contribute to OSM directly.
…All this data and interoperability talk makes this project seem aimed more at the Google Maps API rather than the consumer-level navigation app. All of Google’s mapping data is in the consumer app, but it’s also up for grabs to developers via the Google Maps API. The API lets them embed a map into a project and draw a UI around it, or they can query the Google Maps database for specific info. For services like rideshares, shippers, food delivery services, and flight tracking, they often just want to show a map without having to worry about mapping the entire world and keeping it up to date. The Google Maps API lets any developer embed the world-class Google Maps dataset into their app, provided they’re willing to pay a hefty price…When Uber held its IPO in 2019, the company reportedly paid $58 million for Google Maps API access over the previous 3 years, and that was mostly before the Google Maps price hike. $3 million a year is a bargain compared to that.