Monday, January 9, 2012

Open Source Maps Gain Ground as Google Paywall Looms

Google announced late last year that they would start charging some of their Maps clients fees. 


Google is keen to emphasize, though, that the changes won't hit sites or apps who are light users of Google Maps. 
Ordinary restaurants or hotels, say, won't be affected. To be charged, you have to hit 25,000 map loads per day.

As expected, some of Google's paid clients are not sticking around to see how much it's going to cost them - they're looking for alternatives.  

Nestoria is one of those companies that was told it would have to start paying real money for Google Maps. When Google couldn’t tell it exactly how much, Nestoria kicked Mountain View to the curb and switched to OpenStreetMap, a free, collaborative effort to map the globe...
OpenStreetMap, or OSM, is yet another example of a project that manages to compete with a massive tech company simply by crowdsourcing a problem. Much like Wikipedia challenged Encyclopedia Britannica and Linux took on Microsoft Windows, OpenStreetMap is battling Google Maps, and at least in some cases, it’s winning. 
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