Google's Next Big Money Maker Could Be the Maps on Your Phone (bloomberg.com)

Google became the world's most profitable internet company on the back of search advertising. Now, it's turning another popular web service into a major cash machine. From a report: Google Maps is an indispensable part of life for more than 1 billion people, who use it to commute, explore new cities or find a hot new restaurant. The service has been mostly free, and free from ads, since it launched 14 years ago.

Interviews with Google executives and customers show this is changing as the internet giant increases the ways advertisers can reach Maps users, while raising prices for some businesses that use the underlying technology. The app now regularly highlights sponsored locations, and shows extra paid listings when people look for nearby gas stations, coffee shops or other businesses. "There's a big opportunity for them to ramp up monetization," said Andy Taylor, associate director of research at digital marketing agency Merkle. "They've been slow-playing it."

"Sometimes I say the most under-monetized asset that I cover is Google Maps," Brian Nowak, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, said while interviewing Google's business chief Philipp Schindler at a recent conference. "It's almost like a utility where it's kind of waiting for you to flip the switch on." Schindler's response showed that Google isn't waiting anymore.

Comments

Go on.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck up your best thing going, see who replaces you.

Re:Go on.

[swillden]

I wouldn't call it their 'best thing going', it's been massively bloated for quite some time now. You shouldn't need a quad-core 3GHz processor just to look at a fucking map.

You shouldn't need a computer at all to look at a fucking map. Ironically, that doesn't compute for anyone under the age of 30.

Bah (and I'm long past 30).

Who wants to deal with paper maps? Certainly no one who travels very much. I remember the pre-mobile maps days quite well, and NO THANK YOU! What a pain in the ass. You either had to find a place to buy a real map every time you went somewhere, or try to make do with the crappy, detail-free maps provided by the car rental agency. Oh, and you had better not be traveling alone, because trying to navigate with a paper map while driving basically meant having to choose between dying or getting repeatedly lost and having to pull over and stop to examine the map and figure out where you went wrong.

Oh, and forget trying to navigate by paper map in a foreign country where you don't speak the language -- especially if they don't use a latin alphabet. Back in the day, it would never have occurred to me even to try to drive -- or use the mass transit system -- in any Asian country. Now, no problem.

And good luck trying to refold a blasted paper map. (Actually, I'm pretty good at it, but it's a rare and hard-won skill.)

Nope, I'll take mobile maps with offline download, automatic route calculation, incredibly-accurate travel time estimates, in my language, with excellent mass transit support (often with real-time arrival info) and voice prompts while driving every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Oh, and walking directions that don't tell you to walk where you shouldn't (though I'll grant that walking directions have only recently gotten good enough to be really useful in Google Maps).

And that's just for getting around. Those cruddy paper maps were almost, but not quite, utterly useless for finding restaurants, gas stations or anything else. Sometimes they had a marginally-useful gazetteer, but that was rare (and generally only included places who'd paid for the privilege of being listed -- hmm). And on the rare occasions where restaurant info was provided, the maps completely and totally failed to provide reviews on the food quality, timeliness and friendliness of the waitstaff, or even price range! Much less the full menu (that's hit or miss even today; but happens often enough that I usually skip any place that doesn't provide it.)

Paper. Maps. Suck.

Not because I don't know how to use them, but because they are severely feature-deficient. They only tell me a tiny fraction of what I want to know, and do it in an extremely inconvenient way.

Let me pay for it

[Anonymous Coward]

If it must be monetized, I'd rather pay for it than have it direct my to a business that has paid to promote itself, if at the same time it does not show others.

Open Street Map?

[Freischutz]

"Sometimes I say the most under-monetized asset that I cover is Google Maps," Brian Nowak, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, said while interviewing Google's business chief Philipp Schindler at a recent conference...

Morgan Stanley, Brrrr.... just hearing those two words makes my skin crawl. People should consider replacing Google Maps with Open Street Map. I've been using mobile apps that use this mapping service for a few years now. It's every bit as good as Google Maps and the offline function is vastly superior to what you get with Google Maps app. Using Open Street Map also has the added benefit of starving the beast (a.k.a. Google).

Re:Open Street Map?

[Freischutz]

Can you recommend a privacy respecting implementation for Android? I think you're right, and it's a bit past time to be switching.

Nail in the coffin and all that jazz. I'm moving *everything* off Google gradually. We tried the experiment, and got fucked. I'd rather pay for services and have some leverage with misbehaving corporations.

Karta GPS and Maps.me are the most popular ones on iOS and Android. I've only used Maps.me but it did OK enough for my purposes. I picked it mainly because the offline option is really good and the offline feature on Google Maps sucked ass by comparison back then. Be prepared to download a couple of gigabytes of maps for the offline functionality so better do that on a Wifi. Maps.me is ad-supported, and it is Russian if that scares you, Karta GPS was developed by a Portuguese company (I think), not sure how they support themselves. You are never going to find a free app like this that does not finance themselves through either ads, selling your data or charging companies for overlaying their store/restaurant/garage/hotel locations onto the OpenStreetMap's map data. That being said, at least they are not Google and will probably not rape your privacy anything as outrageously as Google and Morgan Stanley will. There is a list of mobile Apps on the OpenStreetMap Wiki:

iOS apps: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org...
Android apps: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org...

Re:Sounds like a recipe for disaster.

[demonlapin]

Traffic data. The shortest route is a problem well solved by now, the fastest-assuming-normal-speeds is as well. But I’ve had GM spare me hours in traffic because it knows what is happening right now and can route around the problem. In one case, 2+ hours, just because of a bridge closure. I didn’t need to cross it, but it backed the highway up so badly. I don’t use it at home for short distances, but I always use it when traveling.

Alternatives

[Arkham]

I've been trying to get rid of Google for years, but gmail and google maps (especially via Waze) are the most valuable things in Google's portfolio. Replacing Google search with Duck Duck Go was painless. But Google's map product is the best one on the market.

Alternatives:

Apple Maps -- not bad really, but the estimates are too conservative, and the routes aren't always optimal, and the traffic is often out of date
HERE Maps -- formerly Nokia HERE, these offer offline navigation. Traffic is optional.I am not sure if it does voice or not.

Are there others? I don't know. I use Waze mostly for the police identification (not that I even drive fast anymore, but I think it's fun to screw the opportunists trying to make money off people who just want to get home).