Microsoft Doing the Big Drive in the US

location based services


I think location based services are a fantastic idea, in theory. However the cost structures the carriers generally want to provide, and the cartel of cartography data keeps most of the interesting stuff that could happen with LBS from really making it out to the public. The map stuff is really a sore point for me, because innovation is being stiffled in order to protect entrenched business models.
Most people tell me to grow up and just deal with it. The only real option is to get a whole bunch of vans with GPS in them and make up your own maps, and no one is going to bother doing that at this point. It’s too expensive. No one except maybe Microsoft it would seem. They’ve had vans spotted in a number of places apparently building up their own cartography information. Interesting move on the part of Microsoft, especially together with their Windows Live Search beta being available for Java in addition to Windows Mobile. Microsoft normally shys away from Java. Looks like they might be genuinely interested in opening up the market here, that’s not normally their way.
Even more interesting however is that this could break the cartel. There were very few sources of US map data, and they gaurded their position agressively. The supposedly “open” Google and Yahoo maps offerings carried heavy restrictions on what kinds of data you could use to drive your web applications. Using GPS info to drive the mapping app was specifically prohibited by the terms of service for both. This was done to protect the revenue model baked into providing mapping info to manufacturers of offline GPS hardware, and crippled the more expansive market to protect the smaller established one.
The Microsoft version of the data won’t bear any such restrictions. If Microsoft wants to bake location stuff into upcoming releases of Windows Mobile in a way that allows developers to access cartography and point of interest info directly from their app they would be in a pretty unique position to be able to do so. It would potentially force the other providers to update their thinking and allow their info to be used in networked applications by third parties, or get gradually squeezed to death. Either way works for me as it turns out. I end up with a smile on my face in both cases.