The only redeeming quality of Google Maps is that it is incredibly good product.

But at the same time it’s extremely anti-competitive: essentially very few companies can invest many billions of dollars it took Google to collect the data for a product which is still very poorly monetized. Instead Google chooses to offer it for free to moat Search/Ads.

I mean, that's a pretty great redeeming quality!

I don't see how a high cost of entry is anti-competitive...at least in a way that's google's fault. Many industries have a high cost of entry, and there's entire businesses that crop up to lower it. Technology used to have a much higher cost of entry before cloud computing, for example. If you were doing anything at scale before 2005 or so, you had to own and maintain your own metal. Even Google Maps is one of those cost lowerers. A lot of companies were able to build their business on the back of google maps APIs.

Predatory pricing is the issue here, not high cost of entry. Anti-competitive activities have specific definitions rooted in the study of industrial organization. You can't go around making judgment calls based on what seems intuitively good or bad to you.

The anti-competitive question varies country to country, but in the US (where Google, the example given, is based) the question is: "does this cause consumer harm?" not "does this make it hard for another company to make money at it?".

Taking information that used to be locked up, re-discovering it from the "ground truth" (literally driving every road in some cases), and then giving it to the world for free does ruin some business models based on gate keeping, but it doesn't harm the consumer.

So should society force Google to charge for Maps? How much?

No, anticompetitive behavior is not determined with a single question. It's a whole field of study. You may as well say companies evaluate their code by the single criteria of "how fast does it run?"

With a price artifically approaching zero in a product with high margnial cost and higher long run average cost, product tying with android and google search at the least, dominant and uncontestable market power, there's a lot of bells ringing here, and more than enough to suspect significant deadweight loss to society and, yes, "harm" to consumers.

All of these terms have specific definitions, by the way. They don't just mean good or bad. And that list is far from exhaustive.

As a user, I honestly prefer Open Street Maps, because it has a much finer level of detail. For instance, it shows playgrounds, which is great if you are a parent.

It's funny how we've taken it for granted that the service of maps and routing (one I consider a technological marvel) is free just when Google starts to put ads in Maps. I guess it must have been hard to convince venture capital in 2005 to fund the innovation necessary (or, more likely, early Google engineers were incredibly good).

In 2005, the VC scene was very different. YC was doing its first year. Cloud computing wasn't really a thing yet. You had to have own your own metal if you were at any serious scale.

What I left out of my original story was that a third engineer chimed in (from Yahoo!) that asked if the real enemy to innovation here wasn't the map-data companies whose terms made it impossible to leverage for innovation. The cost was prohibitively high to get started. It's really what kept innovation back in maps and affording it was what google's real advantage was.

But that's a big reason why OpenStreetMaps exists today.

What happens if Google decides to exert its authority with its monopoly (charging a ton, charging businesses to appear, etc)?

Now there is no service for customers to switch to. Anti competitive behavior benefits the customer as long as the company wants it that way. The moment it decides otherwise, customers hurt a lot more than they would have by paying for the service since its inception (where there would be alternatives to the service)

Well, there's Bing Maps and Apple Maps and OpenStreetMap. Also, paper maps are still a thing, believe it or not. There's always been map competitors, so your argument is already a little shaky. However, let's go with the spirit of your argument and say Google is now the only game in town when it comes to maps. What happens is that antitrust law kicks in. The FTC web site has great material explaining how it works. Attempted monopolization with the intent of controlling market price is arguably a black and white violation of the Sherman Act. This would not necessarily require there to be competitors, but would require Google to operate in good faith with the public, similar to public utility companies and even cable providers.

The problem with the trend is the next step, where significant monetisation only starts once a monopoly has been created (first kill the competition through subsidisation from a big company and a price tag of £free, then create a poorer product with loads of ads to profit once the original company is dead).

Ive heard a bit about these barcamp style events (I'm not in SF) and I'm interested in replicating this culture or event format. might you have a link or search terms where I can find more info about how these are like?