You mean like if the following GPS location is uttered verbally to, say, a first responder: 40.7485452,-73.9879575 ...you likely would end up in midtown NYC...while if i verbally forget to include the "-"...then i end up in Kyrgyzstan? ;-)
I'm teasing you of course (all in good fun). But you certainly make valid points: what3words isn't perfect...But, i still stand by the point that it's a novel approach, AND that there's an opportunity here (here, i mean an opportunity for the betterment of society, safety, humanity, etc., less about "business opportunity").
There are many alternative systems that are open and based on algoritmes. The only downside of those: they do not have massive VC money backing them to do the marketing. But then again, in the end these VCs will need a massive return. Guess who will pay for that ;-)
nothing wrong with the basic idea of using words, but this implementation serves as a hash to obfuscate locations through a closed standard. One could form a grid per word and make it finer in steps, but then people would understand buffalo is US, banana is NYC, and bogus is midtown, and be able to use the system without the whatthreewords service... thinking about it we do have those words already, US.NYC.midtown would work just fine...
I'm teasing you of course (all in good fun). But you certainly make valid points: what3words isn't perfect...But, i still stand by the point that it's a novel approach, AND that there's an opportunity here (here, i mean an opportunity for the betterment of society, safety, humanity, etc., less about "business opportunity").