Google just signed a 5-year deal to keep getting map data from Tele Atlas, which is owned by the Dutch GPS maker TomTom.
This is nothing new (except that it specifically states where Google will get maps for phones that run its Android operating system). Google has never made its own maps.
The innovation here is that rather than just sending information to Google, Tele Atlas will get information back. Anytime one of Google’s users updates the location of an address or corrects some error, Google will send that back to Tele Atlas central.
And this isn’t the only source of new information that Tele Atlas has. Users of TomTom devices can apparently update information right from their GPS devices.
How will this matter to regular folks? In lots of ways…
The most obvious advantage is that it will make GPS maps a lot more accurate (provided, of course, that they have effective safeguards against pranksters).
Google Maps began letting people with Google accounts fix map errors back in November. I haven’t seen any numbers on how many people have made corrections since then, but I’d guess it amounts to many millions. I’ve probably made 10 myself.
This is good news for regular people, of course, but it’s also for Tele Atlas and its main competitor, Navteq, which will start allowing crowd-sourcing once it is fully acquired by Nokia.
Both companies spend massive amounts of money paying armies of people to keep updating their maps. Indeed, a great article from The New Yorker explains the process and its limitations.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Entries (RSS)