It's likely going to be a niche market even if they give the updates away for free (because people will mostly use maps on other devices).
And the customer's alternatives include "just use year-old maps" and "use google maps" so it's not like tomtom have the customer over a barrel here.
[1] https://www.amazon.com.au/Updates-Lifetime-Smartphone-Messag...
The device you link wouldn't net updated maps of Australia. Looks like world map devices are closer to $400.
This is what led to their demise, no?
We need a new alternative word for "free" when it comes to advertising companies. Something short to say "the cost is too abstract and indirect to understand fully or describe, but does impact society at large". Maybe "free-ish"?
Nothing is truly free as people commonly conceptualizer it in their mind. Just alone receiving something at all comes with strings, even if they are not apparent. There is a term that describes this issue rather well in German, “vogelfrei”. It refers to being as free as a bird, which is assumed to be a great thing, but it also means you are free to be hunted and predated.
Free is also the theme of a deal with the devil. I will self-censor here a bit about what is the devil, because the devil’s censorship is more consequential than if I do it to myself for the time being.
I don’t think this is an accurate assumption. Many adults probably have a nagging feeling about this version of free, I doubt most of us can accurately describe the cost (and most wouldn’t care to try).
I mean it really does “feel” free in that the costs are so abstract and externalized. In fact I’d argue that it has completely changed our perspective on pricing, value, and entitlement.
Anyways, total tangent to the main topic.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=tomtom
.. that's also when I stopped using them I think, and what's interesting is that once you get into the habit of using a new map+navigation service it seems quite hard to switch or is that just me? (I want to try Apple because I like them more than Google but I'm just so used to Google Maps)
I don't think it's just you. :) I know a fair number of iOS users who switched to the standalone Google Maps app during the, shall we say, rocky first year of Apple Maps, and who I've never been able to convince to look back -- and these are people who live in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Apple Maps is arguably at its best.
DonHopkins 5 months ago | parent | context | favorite | on: TomTom to cut 10% of jobs due to improved automati...
I worked at TomTom in Amsterdam from 2007-2009, and had a fun time and learned a lot working with some smart people at a great company that treated us well and had good leadership.
But TomTom was just on the cusp of a small company turning into a big company.
And the savings and loan crisis was about to cause the economy to collapse.
Then TomTom got into a bidding war with Garmin over Tele Atlas.
So they ended up borrowing a whole lot of money at a really bad time.
Just as the iPhone was hitting the market, and Google and Apple were rolling out free maps and turn-by-turn navigation on smart phones that everybody already had.
I wrote about that earlier in the discussion about Etak:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13747015
DonHopkins on Feb 27, 2017 | parent | context | favorite | on: Who Needs GPS? The Story of Etak's 1985 Car Naviga...
"Etak eventually became a part of TomTom, ensuring that its map data, some of which was first digitized back during the Navigator's development in 1984, would live on to this day."
The story of how TomTom and not Garmin ended up owning the data originally digitized at Etak is interesting. At the time, there were only two digital map companies: Tele Atlas (from which TomTom got their map data) and Navteq (from which Garmin got their map data).
From Wikipedia [1]:
"On July 23, 2007, a €2 billion offer for the company by navigation system maker TomTom was accepted by the Tele Atlas board. This was then trumped by a €2.3 billion offer from United States-based rival Garmin on October 31, 2007 initiating a bidding war for Tele Atlas. TomTom responded by upping their bid to €2.9 billion, an offer which was again approved by the board of Tele Atlas. Garmin had been expected to counterbid once again: with Tele Atlas' main global rival Navteq subject to a takeover bid from Nokia, the company had stated that it did not wish both companies to fall into the hands of rivals. However, after striking a content agreement with Navteq through the year 2015, Garmin withdrew its takeover offer, clearing the way for TomTom. On December 4, 2007, TomTom shareholders approved the takeover. The European Commissioner for Competition cleared the takeover in May 2008, and it closed in June."
TomTom (where I worked at the time) was shocked and dismayed that Garmin outbid them by €300 million on Tele Atlas, because while it made a lot of sense for TomTom to buy their own map data supplier, it would have been prohibitively complex and expensive for Garmin, who used Navteq data, to switch map data sources and retool their entire map data digestion, distribution and error correction pipelines.
TomTom was so determined to buy Tele Atlas and keep it out of Garmin's hands, that they raised their bid by €900 million.
In the meantime, Garmin renegotiated their deal with Navteq, so they didn't have to pay as much for the data, and didn't have to switch map suppliers.
The stunt that Garmin pulled off was, in my opinion, an ingenious head-fake that cost TomTom an enormous amount of money, almost a billion euros, and at the same time saved Garmin a whole lot of money by enabling them to renegotiate a better deal with Navteq, who was faced with losing their major customer if they didn't lower their prices.
There was also an instance when they unceremoniously stopped supporting updates on “old” devices that were not actually that old and were in fact still actively being sold in stores (in the UK at least). I know people who switched to alternatives (the smartphone option in all cases IIRC) and vowed they'd never pay for another TomTom device again after that.
To be fair, perhaps more fair than is deserved IMO, the devices still did (probably still do) get qgps updates so function normally apart from having outdated maps and can, somewhat disingenuously, be said to be still be getting their lifetime updates.
Kinda a neat feature, but it makes you wonder what else it is learning.
Knowing where to switch between freeways and surface streets, and what route to take in what conditions, can cut half off the driving time.
Some examples of varying conditions from my personal history, even with optimal routing:
Commute to work: 22 minutes. Commute home: 1h 16min.
Go visit a friend: 45 minutes. Come back home at night: 16 minutes.
Yes - I remember as a kid learning how to read maps and noticing my dad's face when I was like "These cities are only 10 miles apart. Why does it take an hour to get to grandfather's?".
The surface streets are an especially interesting blindspot a lot of drivers have. There was a period around the turn of the century where I was commuting between Santa Ana and Garden Grove and freeway traffic was generally manageable early in the morning but on the trip home it was often better to cruise down the surface streets where the lights were timed around 20mph than to sit in stop-and-go traffic on 405 or 55/5.
There is a gate right behind me that is closed with chains. It isn't possible to drive through there, though you can walk in and out from the smaller gate.
Google still always tells me to drive through the gate. I don't think Google Maps auto-learns. Maybe it needs a bigger sample size so people don't abuse it?
Also, phones generally have larger and brighter screens, and more accurate GPS. I don’t see the advantage of TomTom here.
Their recommendations are all over the place despite the fact that I have been logged in permanently in some form or another since GMail where still invite only.
No one else except my wife and my parents know more about me (and to be perfectly clear they know different subsets of me) but yet Google still insist on showing me the most irrelevant and annoying ads and suggest I call people at work in the middle of the night etc etc.
The most annoying thing is they had this nailed. Google Desktop Search had some bonus features like the feed sidebar that automatically predicted what I wanted to read more of based on what I had read before and it was crazy good.
Search used to be amazing and these days I feel it is barely better than DDG.
Errr all maps apps do this.
Such a simple thing and yet TomTom can do it and Google can't.
I've also seen that same very app as a builtin navigation with all the features (including live traffic) in a new Fiat 500e, so it seems like they're licensing the tech to car manufacturers.
However, it still downloads an arbitrary rectangle, and there is still the same maximum size; it just automatically centers it on what you selected and gives it a reasonable name.
Google Maps offline has been extremely unreliable for me and mostly unreliable when I had the greatest need for it. This was true years ago and this was true less than a month ago.
If I'm going to someplace with spotty connectivity, I make sure to put in all the main addresses and locations on my car's navigation system ahead of time. The maps might be dated but at least it'll generate a route somewhat towards the destination, even if I might need to take a detour along the way.
That being said, why do you need your navigation to start while in your garage? Just start it before you enter your garage or right as you drive out of it if you want to benefit from GMaps benefits.
I don't know how it can be using TomTom's data if TomTom doesn't have any of the same issues.
I really struggle to believe that. Major roads missing from Apple Maps? Can you give any examples?
Maybe they got tired of mapping the millionth quaint village named something like Branstonpickle-upon-Trousers.
Since Covid, I don't go anywhere consistently enough for it to know what to suggest :)
Tesla also have a "simple" version of this, if you are at home, it will automatically to go to work in the "morning", and in the afternoon it will automatically go "home" if you are at the office. But this seems to be location/time based, and not behavioural.
Yes, and this feature drove me crazy until I figured out how to turn it off. The two places I know how to get to are to work every morning, and home from work every afternoon! It's the _other_ places that need navigation.
Apple Maps does this too
Android auto gets forced into this like 4:3 resolution in the middle of the screen which sucks and I can't find a way to fix it, even after looking in developer settings.
People have said it's the car manufacturers fault, I really don't understand why it has to be this way though
I struggling to see how anything could be "definitely" better than "crappy" Google Maps. To me, GMaps has made navigation about as exciting as using a door knob. It works without fail, and is so incredibly mundane, that the thought of forming a strong opinion about it makes me drowsy.
If I use an alternative and get stuck in traffic, I'm not gonna be thinking about how proud I am of myself for sitting in traffic in the name of sticking it to Google. I'm gonna be thinking "should have used Google Maps"
The audio directions are much clearer - e.g. "Go through this light, and at the next one turn right".
The integration with Siri and CarPlay is very handy - e.g. "Hey Siri, get directions to Bob's house".
And the traffic data is noticeably better in the last year.
Disclaimer: I live in suburban U.S. - I've heard less good things about AM in rural areas.
Ranging from simple updates like hours, address corrections - to more human-oriented updates like "The end destination point is about 500 ft off from the actual location".
I believe someone really is looking at them and correcting them.
So long as you have a data connection or planned ahead with a downloaded region.
- And have a vehicle that's the size of a normal passenger car. (I used to own a special "RV GPS" that had better data on bridge heights and weight limits.)
Maybe it's just the UK maps and it works fine elsewhere, I don't know.
If you're in a city or suburb with a Google office, it's spotless, including transit options that are often customized to the city itself.
If you're in a city or suburb without a Google office, it's reliable on roads but probably doesn't cover transit particularly well. I'm not sure if the Google vs. non-Google office is just a bias towards the kind of cities Google would put an office in as opposed to the presence of an office making a difference, but Pittsburgh is much better than Columbus or Jacksonville despite being a smaller city.
If you're in a rural area, it's much rougher. Private roads marked as public roads are the biggest thing I've noticed (presumably because aerial maps can't help much there), but also things like ATV tracks and driveways marked as roads and missing one-way indicators (i.e. routing the wrong way up a one-way street).
There's an attribution saying the data is coming from the local metro provider, who has their own interface for accessing the same data, but having it in google maps is nice as it integrates well with other navigation.
So I would say it comes down more to who has partnered with google to make the data more accessible.
Maybe more anecdotal, but I have had great mileage with google maps for navigation while driving too. The government department for land information does make almost all GIS data publicly available which probably helps too.
That’s awesome! What country is this, if you don’t mind me asking? GIS datasets are really fun to play with.
* Bicycle route. They're just terrible at it. Better now than they were some years ago (when major bike routes were completely ignored), but still not great. They still prefer to send you along car routes instead of dedicated bike routes, even when those are shorter.
* Construction work (I don't think TomTom will be any better at this, though). Sometimes they do know construction work is ongoing; for example the Piet Hein tunnel near my house is closed for more than a year, and Google is aware of this. But they also don't show routes across the Amsterdamse Brug, which is still open, and the only real alternative. So instead they send you across crazy detours all over the city. But recently I was riding to Diemen along the Amsterdam-Rijnkanaal, and it turned out that dike was closed due to construction work. Big work with signs everywhere, but Google had no idea, and because there wasn't an easy way around, I had to take a big detour that would have been a lot smaller if Google had been aware of this.
I use it daily to make sure my commute doesn't have any wrecks I'll have to work around, and any time I'm going somewhere unfamiliar. It really got stress tested on our way back from Tenessee during the eclipse exodus a few years ago, routed us (and lots of cars around us lol) through all sorts of Appalachia back-roads when the main highways were clogged and got us home just fine.
With the incredibly large sample size of two I have to conclude it's region specific.
If any app would allow me to have some sort of ability to let me set a level of "pain" (traffic, stoplights, smaller roads, extra turns) that's acceptable vs. a level of time savings, I'd use that app and never look back.
The number of times I've gone seemingly way out of the way only to rejoin a highway 30 minutes later in order to save 2 minutes total (vs the traffic I would have sat in) is way too damn high.
In those cases I just mute it, there's always a mute button.
In all seriousness, have you tried Waze? Gives multiple options each time you search, allowing to choose routes that are simpler, or maybe partially but not fully use tolls.
I trusted it because I didn't really know where I was going, and it had never let me down before. So I followed its instructions down a series of little farm roads to detour around the "break". Except one of the roads crossed under a raging stream, and was only passable during the dry season. I actually fishtailed a little to stop, because the road was slightly downhill and made of dirt. If I had followed the instructions, I would have died.
Anyway, I submitted a bug report about that highway break, and 5 months later Google wrote back and said my fix had been accepted! How thrilling.
One slight oddity - it doesn't seem to care about which side of the street your destination is on in a lot of cases. Sure, in a suburban neighborhood, that's irrelevant. But in a city with two-way traffic on the street, it can matter quite a lot.
A phone running google maps is a multi-tool.
Google Maps is quite terrible in many parts of the world that are not-America. In Europe, it routinely suggests absolutely insane "shorcuts" because it doesn't seem to understand that even though a narrow, winding country lane with stone walls on either side may have a 90 kph speed limit, it would be suicide to actually drive at that speed.
They also have a tendency to make you stick to the main - congested - roads. You won't notice unless you're a local to the area though, so let's say that's good enough.
Waze in my experience seems to have more realistic ETAs and is better at routing around traffic jams. Even though it's built on Google Maps.
However I'm in Romania and I do long weekends in mountain retreats in the middle of nowhere. As I said, YMMV.
One time it wanted me to walk through the waste/sewer pipes of Mallorca to go from a beach to the city center, let me tell you it's not a pedestrian path.
But Maps is definitely worse than dedicated navigation devices, although it does improve over time.
There are certain things it is particularly bad at, for example routing down slow 20mph residential roads with speed bumps.
But... are the dedicated navigation devices so much better than Google Maps to justify the increased cost? Probably not for 99% of people.
I used to use a Garmin satnav, and plug it in to my laptop and use Garmin's software to do my travel expenses, full tracking of all my movements, and it's my data to do with as I wish with no concerns. I can do the same thing through Google Timeline... but it's not even close to as well executed, and gives me serious data privacy concerns... because Google.
This is exactly how Apple Maps works, for me. It suggests a destination based on my patterns.
OK, but you need GPS navigation and maps to get between "work" and "home"?
And it has a lifetime subscription to traffic updates with a built-in SIM card that works internationally as well. Drove with it across Europe several times and it's still the best satnav you could have.