[jhall1468]

Bing Streetside and OpenStreetCam are a thing. They just aren't very good. There's a huge up-front investment for street view images that other companies didn't want to take.

Microsoft invested in it, released a product and the product wasn't as good as the market leader. That's not predatory.

[dantheman0207]

Other companies didn’t want to make that huge investment BECAUSE of Google. Google offered the same service for free, which meant they had no recourse for recouping that investment. Now that has changed, and the lack of standing competitors is a direct result of that history.

[jhall1468]

Microsoft has made HUGE investments into Bing and yet Google was always superior and Microsoft isn't exactly rolling in money with Bing.

There are several competitors, the issue at hand is they have an inferior product. If your argument held any water, literally everyone would use TMobile because they are so much cheaper. Reality is, a products quality matters and Google Maps were both more cost effective AND a better product.

[aeorgnoieang]

So you're upset that Google hasn't been charging a lot more all along?

[RugnirViking]

Just because there are competitors in a field does not mean that one company does not hold a monopoly. There were other oil companies in existence when standard oil was broken up.

[jhall1468]

I never said it did. The argument was that there was no competition. There is competition, it's just weak for some aspects of Google Maps. And the argument here seems to be that Google isn't allowed to start charging for a product because they didn't before, which is silly.