Three of the world’s largest technology companies are joining forces to create one map service aimed at ending the dominance of Google Maps🇧🇷 Launched under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation, the project will be called “Overture Maps”
As announced on Thursday (15), the foundation is partnering with Amazon Web Services, Meta, Microsoft and TomTom to design a project that will facilitate the creation of new services based on a single core — something that, clearly, , is nothing new to the organization behind the Linux kernel.
Overture is an open source program for collating map data from around the world from different sources. The expectation is gather the massive volume of data collected by the companies that subscribe to the project to craft a service that can be easily embraced by software developers.
According to Michael Kopenec, general director of Amazon Web Services, geographic data is “complex and expensive”, a factor that reduces competition in this market.
Overture can have extensive integrations with virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR) applications, an area in which it will have the expertise da Meta which, coincidentally or not, has already worked with Microsoft to generate road mapping data in 2020.
TomTom, a Dutch company specializing in map and location technologies, has suffered significant drops in market share since 2008 — curiously, the same year that Google Maps landed in the mobile sector for Android and iOS —, will collaborate with the technological giants to the creation of the geolocation platform.
“Everyone doing a ‘commercial’ map, whether they admit it or not, is starting to see that there are limits to what a company can do, no matter how big, powerful and rich it is,” said Eric Bowman, executive director of technology from TomTom.
Google began to combine the teams behind Maps and Waze, expanding the functionality of both services it owns, causing rival platforms to lose influence in the market.
To end the dominance of North American big tech, the partnership between the companies must generate a more competitive market with a comprehensive platform and easy adoption. “Overture’s standardization and interoperable basemap is critical to bringing together the world’s geographic information,” said Harold Goddijn, CEO of TomTom.
