Comment by alwayslikethis
18 hours ago
IIRC Google maps basically does not make money. I wonder if there can be a government deal to subsidize it on the condition that the data be open sourced.
18 hours ago
IIRC Google maps basically does not make money. I wonder if there can be a government deal to subsidize it on the condition that the data be open sourced.
They made 11B$ last year. It has incredible amount of ads. If you haven't noticed, then that means they did a great job. (tip: look for the custom logo pins in the map. Its printing money)
While I have no way to validate this, I highly suspect that the routing algorithm is also subtly manipulated. There is a route I drive with regular frequency that contains a roughly 20 mile section of two mostly parallel roads, one for through traffic and one for local. Every single time I drive through, Google routes me to the local traffic road. I know for certain the local road is slightly slower and it's also simply incorrect. The only way it makes sense is if it's a bug, or my hunch is that Google weights the route a little higher because it goes by a bunch of businesses that pay for advertising.
Google maps would if it sold the data to Google. My guess is there is a line item for that or at least on paper for tax purposes.