Re:How Microsoft crushed Slack
by singhrac on Sunday December 06, 2020 @12:43AM
(#25321401)
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).
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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.