

Google Maps Open-Source Challenger MapBox Raises $10M From Foundry Group - paulkroka
http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2013/10/16/google-maps-open-source-challenger-mapbox-raises-10m-from-foundry-group/?mod=WSJBlog

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chatman
Stupid title. Even MapBox might agree they don't compete with Google Maps.
They are here to make OSM awesome, and hats off to MapBox for what they've
done so far.

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hackula1
They most certainly do. I got a quote from Google for commercial maps use a
few weeks ago. 17.5k/yr an up. Mapbox seems like a good alternative for
serious web mapping. Google Maps is still pretty week in B2B type mapping
though. Esri is the real competitor here.

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ajtaylor
Only 17.5k/yr? You got off easy! Our first quote at $work was 6 figures,
though we ended up settling on a figure more than yours and less than
$100k/yr. We've now switched to OSM + MapQuest open tiles + leaflet and
couldn't be happier with the result.

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stugrey
Their TileMill software is great. You don't have to sign up to have them serve
your maps, you can use all of their tools to generate your tilesets and do
what you like with them (obviously attributing your data set source). The
MapBox iOS SDK is another stand out contribution from these guys.

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hnha
Some of their free offerings are so great that i sometimes worry they might be
(maybe unintended) in a "embrace, extend" phase, extinguishing competitors
left and right. Their uprise is insane.

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joekrill
I love MapBox -- I am a happy paying customer -- but the title seems a little
misleading: what is open source about them? They source their data from
OpenStreetMap, which is open-source, but MapBox themselves is not. Or am I
missing something?

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mnutt
They open source a lot of their software. Check out tilemill:

[https://www.mapbox.com/tilemill/](https://www.mapbox.com/tilemill/)

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joekrill
That's really awesome. But I still don't think describing MapBox themselves as
"Open-Source" is accurate. There are LOTS Of other companies that open source
a lot of their code, but certainly wouldn't be considered "Open-Source"
themselves: Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, id, Novell, Oracle. The list goes on.

I certainly don't want to take anything away from MapBox. I really love what
they offer. I just don't think it's fair to describe them as "Open-Source".

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incanus77
MapBox does not sell any software or hardware -- all the tools are open
source. Unlike Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, id, Novell, Oracle. The list goes on.

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joekrill
Sure they do. They are a SaaS provider. At least I presume that's what they're
charging my credit card for every month.

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incanus77
Right, but the software used to do it, and the tools to integrate, are open
source, which is the original question above. You can do everything MapBox is
doing yourself, on your own, but good luck scaling and making it georedundant
at super high volume -- that's MapBox's value add.

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joekrill
I did not realize that. This is exactly what I was asking for clarification on
when I first posted. Not sure why we had to get 6 levels deep into the
discussion to get to the point, but here we are. Thank you.

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jusben1369
I wonder how much this is simply about startups not wanting to rely on Google.
Even Apple felt uncomfortable relying on their maps product. So much smaller
startups probably hate that dependency too.

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hackula1
I am sure it is partly due to the fact that this is way cheaper than google
maps or esri for heavy commercial use.

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rohitv
Out of curiosity, how much does the Google Maps API actually cost for a
business license?

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hackula1
17.5k/yr for the lowest package was what I was quoted a couple weeks ago. It
was actually not a terrible deal compared to most of the alternatives as far
as value goes... but the starter package is way larger than you would need for
most things. They essentially price segment the small startups out of the
market. OTOH, many of the other GIS server licenses push 100k+, so that is why
something like mapbox is getting people excited.

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GFischer
I'm doing a Foursquare/Yelp clone/mashup for my country with two friends, and
we're using OSM + Mapbox because we figured it will be much cheaper than
Google (and it's very easy and developer-friendly too).

We're still using the free version so we could have gone with Google, but we
wanted to plan ahead.

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wensing
If your app uses maps, it's time to get on board the MapBox rocket. Resistance
is futile.

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andrewxhill
The mapbox team is fantastic, this is totally great news for all of them, the
mapping community, and map users. Can't wait to see what they come up with
next

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mourner
That's going to seriously shake the mapping space. MapBox is quite an
unstoppable force now.

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pidg
I saw their CEO speak at an event in Geneva last month - went in having not
heard of MapBox, came out impressed. It's a really cool model - particularly
the way that corrections made to a map by a FourSquare user, for example would
be instantly reflected to a user on Uber.

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rajeemcariazo
What happened to OpenStreetMap?

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tommorris
MapBox is to OpenStreetMap as Ubuntu is to Linux.

MapBox provide hosted tiles, beautiful designed custom tiles and a bunch of
nice tools (including iD, the in-browser editor). OpenStreetMap provide the
community-maintained dataset. MapBox have been very supportive of the OSM
community in terms of donations, sponsorship of events, use of office space
and so on.

The point is if you are Foursquare and you want to start using OpenStreetMap,
MapBox will give you commercial support and design services and so on.
OpenStreetMap (the community, the non-profit Foundation etc.) won't.

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yellowbkpk
As someone who sits in #osm and #osm-dev on irc.oftc.net and helps at least
one person a day, I'd like to point out that the community will most
definitely give you support. MapBox certainly makes it easier to pay someone,
but the community isn't completely shut off from the world :).

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tommorris
Oh, sure. We're a pretty friendly and helpful community, but I think the
analogy holds. ;)

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sztanko
Mapbox is awesome. Speaking of their tile maps, there are two things that make
them less competitive compared to Google: geocoding and street view. While
nominatim is fantastic, it is nearly not as good as google maps search, which
has people employed full time to update company listings, etc. There are many
companies that depend on search so much they are willing to stick to google
maps.

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oscargrouch
I just hope they dont fall down as a option when Google come up with a buy
offer..

For users, developers and the society in general, competition and options are
a good thing..

I cant say i didnt feel sad when Waze was bought.. with more time and effort
no product would bare to stand against it

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anonemouscoward
MapBox is a ridiculous joke until they start supporting building numbers.

(Yes, they know of this limitation, but they deliberately cripple their
product because of 'typographical clarity' or somesuch bullshit.)

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mapmeld
Do you mean adding building numbers to the map (similar to the OSM Mapnik
tiles?) This is something you can do yourself in TileMill and then overlay
onto MapBox Streets or other tiles.

