[soulofmischief]

Forced to close by economic forces, not legislative or political pressure. That isn't terrible at all, that's the basis of the capitalist, quasi-competitive economy which these companies champion so much. The most viable service wins. Nothing authoritarian about that.

> There's nothing stopping a non-profit group from creating maps today if they wanted to.

Apple and Google probably feel very differently. We've already seen them fight it out, wait till they join together to start keeping their boots on the up and comers.

In the end I don't give a rat's ass about their profit line and I put advancement of Earth and its people as my top priority.

[manigandham]

"Forced to close by economic forces" is not what the other poster was saying. Competition is good. And yes, Apple and Google will put up a fight because that's how competition works.

>> I put advancement of Earth and its people as my top priority.

Great. Are you working on a mapping service?

[soulofmischief]

If a government or government-sanctioned non-profit receives enough tax credits and funding to create a viable alternative to Google Maps which puts the service out of business, it's still just market competition. We do this all of the time with banks, large American industries, oil companies, etc. You can't have one and turn away the other.

> Great. Are you working on a mapping service?

That's fallacious. I don't have a giant pile of money sitting around. But I support initiatives like OpenStreetMap even if I see room for improvement.

[manigandham]

Again, that's not what the other poster meant by "forced to close". They specifically said maps shouldn't be provided by a for-profit company. That's the opposite of competition.

I'm not sure who you're arguing with because we all want more options, and we already have several from Apple, Microsoft and others. I definitely don't want my taxes being spent on another poorly executed govt project though.

>> I don't have a giant pile of money sitting around.

Maybe you should care about profit then because that's why Google Maps exists.

[soulofmischief]

Google Maps exists because someone at Google had a very noble idea and since then Google has decided it likes service lock-in. It's not a bad product in any form.

But I don't want ads in my map software any more than I want ads in my travel atlases.