Came across this announcement about Google Maps on Android:
http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2009/10/announcing-google-maps-navigation-for.html
I thought this is really cool given it is bringing the power of Cloud Computing to everybody's palm. Most important of all, this is free to the end consumer. I really hope the service works, and hope Google invests enough money to make it available to everybody in the world.
I have a Garmin in my car, but I always felt Google Maps are much better:
On a philosophical note, it makes you wonder what will happen to humans in another 100 years: everybody follows directions from one of these GPS clouds, and there is a possibility we completely lose our map reading skills - the genetic code that our ancestors so patiently built over the past 100,000 years.
I can imagine a couple of science-fiction movies on this theme: somebody hacking the GPS cloud and making drones out of humanity, all GPS systems destroyed by terrorists causing mayhem everywhere (airlines/marine/auto navigation systems all driven by GPS), far into the future - humans lose their dominant species status to rats - because of the poor map-reading skills. If these movies are already made, pardon my ignorance.
I had Garmin for the past 4 years, and I am not proud to admit that I am addicted to it - I just follow the directions given out my Garmin, and don't care to remember if I visited the place a hundred times before.
http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2009/10/announcing-google-maps-navigation-for.html
I thought this is really cool given it is bringing the power of Cloud Computing to everybody's palm. Most important of all, this is free to the end consumer. I really hope the service works, and hope Google invests enough money to make it available to everybody in the world.
I have a Garmin in my car, but I always felt Google Maps are much better:
- Information is more accurate and up-to-date (Garmin/Navteq has 1000 employees to collect map data, Google has millions - advantage of crowd-sourcing)
- User-interface (Garmin is pretty bad here - no word-completions, no good search interface)
- Computing power (You can never beat the cloud - it takes 5 minutes to zoom the picture on Garmin)
- Cost - I paid $400 for my Garmin, have to update the data every year and more if I want POI data
If I can get more accurate information for free - I don't see a reason why I should buy another GPS device. Effectively Google is killing the entire auto/mobile GPS industry (>$10billion?) with this one announcement. Garmin makes 70% of its revenues from auto segment - and I am sure it will see some rapid declines there. You should feel for Nokia - it bought Navteq for $8billion in 2007 (on a company that was making ~$500 mil in annual revenues) - I can bet Navteq will be worth lot less than $8B in the coming years.
Overall, I think this is a significant event to the mobile industry, and very good for the world - it redefines mobility and it will have a similar effect that email had during the 1990s. It would have taken decades for this democratization of location data - if we left it to the current GPS vendors.
This service can be a very good move from Google's point of view:
Overall, I think this is a significant event to the mobile industry, and very good for the world - it redefines mobility and it will have a similar effect that email had during the 1990s. It would have taken decades for this democratization of location data - if we left it to the current GPS vendors.
This service can be a very good move from Google's point of view:
- More android based devices in the market, and more users for Google Maps
- Better map accuracy (crowd sourcing) than competing vendors
- More ad-revenues for Google (they now know where you are in addition to what you think)
- More cloud-based services for the mobile users from Google (economies of scale & scope for Google)
On a philosophical note, it makes you wonder what will happen to humans in another 100 years: everybody follows directions from one of these GPS clouds, and there is a possibility we completely lose our map reading skills - the genetic code that our ancestors so patiently built over the past 100,000 years.
I can imagine a couple of science-fiction movies on this theme: somebody hacking the GPS cloud and making drones out of humanity, all GPS systems destroyed by terrorists causing mayhem everywhere (airlines/marine/auto navigation systems all driven by GPS), far into the future - humans lose their dominant species status to rats - because of the poor map-reading skills. If these movies are already made, pardon my ignorance.
I had Garmin for the past 4 years, and I am not proud to admit that I am addicted to it - I just follow the directions given out my Garmin, and don't care to remember if I visited the place a hundred times before.
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