I guess that product is a prime example for becoming irrelevant by society progressing. I actually still use an old TomTom in my old car that doesn't have a screen (well, it does, but didn't come with a GPS built in - adding it after the fact would have been around 1000£), since I don't have a smart phone. But it has been years since I updated the maps, probably wouldn't even be supported any more?!
And it has a lifetime subscription to traffic updates with a built-in SIM card that works internationally as well. Drove with it across Europe several times and it's still the best satnav you could have.
I struggling to see how anything could be "definitely" better than "crappy" Google Maps. To me, GMaps has made navigation about as exciting as using a door knob. It works without fail, and is so incredibly mundane, that the thought of forming a strong opinion about it makes me drowsy.
OK, but you need GPS navigation and maps to get between "work" and "home"?
Also, phones generally have larger and brighter screens, and more accurate GPS. I don’t see the advantage of TomTom here.
This is exactly how Apple Maps works, for me. It suggests a destination based on my patterns.
Tesla also have a "simple" version of this, if you are at home, it will automatically to go to work in the "morning", and in the afternoon it will automatically go "home" if you are at the office. But this seems to be location/time based, and not behavioural.
Android auto gets forced into this like 4:3 resolution in the middle of the screen which sucks and I can't find a way to fix it, even after looking in developer settings.
People have said it's the car manufacturers fault, I really don't understand why it has to be this way though
Since Covid, I don't go anywhere consistently enough for it to know what to suggest :)
Apple Maps does this too
Errr all maps apps do this.
The last time i checked in about 2007 the price of a yearly UK update was eye watering. I just accepted that if i take the new by-pass Tom will scream thinking im in a lake.
I've also seen it as a default navigation provider in many car brands so I find your bubble biased post pretty funny - and kinda sad, because we see a lot of those here these days. Is it really so hard to stop for a second and think whether there might be people out there that don't share your preferences?
Unfortunately for these manufacturers, all these technologies also enabled smart phones with GPS which quickly destroyed the market.
I'm of an era where my first TomTom was an external GPS receiver that connected to a PDA (Palm Pilot?) via Bluetooth, with all manner of cradles, wires and such. The GPS receiver needed to be re-paired each time I made a journey.
I used to pick up and deliver lease cars from/to customers, and I'll never forget the Audi which had navigation, but no screen! There was a two line text display, which would show textual directions. It was an interesting experience!
My dad's early-2000s Peugeot 407 also had a similar set-up: a red/orange monochrome dot-matrix display, with a surprisingly hot backlight, capable of displaying only the most rudiminary of roundabout diagrams and now-and-next directions. It did use TTS to pronounce street names with the wrong inflection and an overemphasis on "yAAARds" as units-of-distance for some reason. It was controlled by an easy-to-lose infrared remote-control D-pad: entering an address meant picking each letter one-by-one from an A-Z list until it could autocomplete the street name.
I was always envious of kids whose parents had contemporaneous Mercedes with their full-color 3-4" LCD screens - until they'd told me of how bad UX was across the board: stuff like sub-usable frame-rates, overpriced map-data updates, etc - and this never got better over time until Tesla showed-up with 17" full-screen 60fps Google satellite imagery right there. And still the rest of the car industry doesn't "get" good UX. Le sigh.
(Yes, I drive a Model X and I'll decide the next car I buy squarely on the car's software UX - because if they can't get something as simple as smooth framerates right then what else are they getting wrong in the car?)
I did look into them at one point, but they had a €500 price tag which is a bit steep.
Edit: they are also weather resistant which is a huge plus over most phones
I think my security would be compromized if I had to look at a screen regularly while riding my motorbike.
I'd say a better option is to use a headset and follow vocal instructions.
TomTom is what I use on every vacation trip. Wouldn't do that with Google Maps.
Google Maps always picks strange roads and often I see me driving through a red light district or something, where TomTom would pick more conventional roads.
I think the cloud based gps on phones won for being free and having traffic info.
My Tom Tom had the “mr T” celebrity voice yelling directions at me. A friend had John Clease. This is before gps directions told you street names, but with ai I think they could manage this again.
I think those older GPS chips might only use the US-operated GPS system while modern ones can consider other positioning satellites as well. And they also can't download AGPS data of satellite drift from the internet, so they need to get it from the satellites themselves.
There's still the use case of driving in remote areas with less-than-ideal or expensive connectivity (though probably those spots don't really require sophisticated nav), and also that you might not want to tell ad monopolies your location data.
But I've seen another uses of dedicated GPS appliances: bikers. They use rugged ones, they don't break so easily as phones.
The car does not let you change anything with the navigation if the car is in motion, apparently they've never heard of passengers.
It doesn't help that map upgrades are ferociously expensive, around a hundred dollars.
That was probably the most interesting part of the whole comment!
holup. what do you mean? like you don't own one or don't use one?
Surprisingly, I seem to be able to go through life just fine, so don't worry.
I’m edging closer to this way of living. Is this by choice, if so, why?
sensor derived data, user generated content, camera vans all of that is not new. All this existed when I left, so did the people mentioned in this announcement that are still running the show. I always hoped they would eventually realize that they need a fresh top management, but they seem to just keep doing the same old stuff with the same old people until the final collapse of the company.
Yes, I'm being sarcastic. It's a win-win situation when ANY large mapping group joins OSM. At the very least; they will accidentally contribute road-level improvements when they work with the data. I rely upon OSM data and need these large players throwing their weight behind this mapping system.
The point of their comment was to criticise TomTom for not doing much interesting themselves, not to discuss the nuances of OSM. In this context, "steal" makes sense because it's something that TomTom can claim to be innovative with while actually the innovation credit belongs to OSM.
They could even make an app to submit the improvements and even show me ads, I don't care. I would still do it.
If TomTom was planning on conflating OSM data with other sources then in theory it hurts their business model because they will potentially have to make their entire map (or large parts of it) freely available in OSM.
If they can somehow set up clean room conditions and keep all their other data sources physically separated from the OSM data then it might be avoided, but then how do you do the map conflation? And that would certainly impact how quickly they can make updates.
Maybe they came up with some clever way to avoid having to contribute data back to OSM and that’s what OP means by “steal.”
They were caught red handed in 2018 i think, and blamed on some contractors. But most interesting, despite this being a widely know fact for the mapping community, i can't find any mention of it anywhere today.
One are the carmakers, OEM’s. Take for instance CARIAD, the Volkswagen software arm. They are a TomTom partner. Their strength is sensor data. There will be 40 million Volkswagen brand cars where the front camera sends data to the servers. Their problem is that they don’t have mapping expertise. They do want to build their own services on top of a base map. For instance all charging stations that are theirs. (ionity).
Then you have tomtom. Their strength is AI and machine learning and how to fuse those vehicle sensor data in the map. Also they have a team of 1.000 mapping employees in Pune, India. Making edits every day and checking change reports with other data like sattelite imagery. Their challenge is that they need those data from car sensors (and they get them)
Then there is obviously OSM. Where the strength is the wisdom of the community. But also a weakness that people can make mistakes and from time to time vandalism happens.
In this new venture you get a best of both (or in this case 3) worlds.
The India people in Pune can do quality checks on OSM data. For instance comparing with other sources. And their tools and AI can fuse sensor data from cars of tomtom partners. Those are Volkswagen group but also Stellantis (merger of Peugeot-Citroen and Fiat-Chrysler-Jeep), Toyota and others.
The TomTom base map (lowest layar) will be provided to OSM.
Forgot to mention one thing, which is Apple. TomTom gets their probe data which helps in street geometry and traffic. With the help of OSM TomTom now has a Japan map. Very important for carmakers in Japan. Big market. Because in Japan 80% of mobile phone users are iOS users (huge iPhone marketshare) this is an opportunity to get data from many sources together. Also from Japanese carmakers like Toyota who do research with TomTom on HD maps for autonomous driving and assisted driving (ADAS).
This looks like a win-win-win for all three. Carmakers, TomTom and OSM. And a worry for Google Maps and HERE technologies.
Its still the same as person before you explains.
TomTom is trying to create competition to HERE map making platform.
And I agree a change id upper management is needed / despite new CTO being hired.
It's a press release I suppose, but saying the world lacks an open platform, and processing to use such open platform, sounds a bit weird
I'd love to hear more about that
Tom Tom have got their work cut out, this space is super competitive. Just passively taking the data is not a way to compete in this space. You need to step up to stand out. Tom Tom is doing this out of necessity. They've been active in this space for a long time but they are now getting a lot of competition from other companies; many of whom are pooling resources via open data efforts, like open street maps. That gives these companies a cost advantage because maintaining maps is an expensive business and the base map is now a free commodity.
Seriously though, the prestige of OSM and the companies building on it is only growing—a success story of epic proportions to the open source and open data communities!
I occasionally challenge myself, and I am always surprised how much more active my mind is, compared to GPS where my mind is passively glancing at the screen every few seconds to see if I'm on course and next turn.
If you don't navigate you lose spatial awareness over time, I know some people who can't tell you how to get to their job from their house.
It also helps to build up a mental map of the city I live in, which I find to be one of those skills you can learn which feels like a bit of a superpower. Being able to find and navigate along a route, deal with detours, or navigate yourself around congested areas.
Recently I was trying to leave a large complex parking area when we noticed it was gridlocked. We were able to navigate a way out the back that hadn't become congested yet, and save ourselves from 4+ hours of waiting and ending up on the news.
We had split the map data sources to not drive customers away and we split our licensing between our app and the map subscription. It was an interesting problem, we had one employee that only did OpenStreetMap - keeping maps up to date, manually solving problems etc - this was actually much cheaper than buying TomTom, but still we couldn’t match the quality of TomTom. So, we would recommend: do you need high accuracy maps, buy TomTom, otherwise use the cheaper variant.
We were also implementing Here Maps (the old Nokia Maps), when I left, and it looked really promising, but I think the same licensing scheme, only “cheaper”, we could make do with only about 100k in pre-bought licenses
Its an unfortunate situation of the two parties involved in this software each pointing at each other and blaming the other with neither willing to budge.
OSM, I would argue rightly says it's up to map makers how to query the data their project puts out there. The app makers claim (this sounds like BS) that OSM's data or API makes that too hard to do.
Either way absolutely unusable. If TomTom can just make a search that works better than this and layer that over the OSM data they've got a win IMO.
Very true. I do cut them some slack when I remember that they're essentially competing against the world leader in search. (Not that I use their search engine, but it's not for a lack of quality that I stopped using it.)
> If TomTom can just make a search that works better than this and layer that over the OSM data they've got a win IMO.
Exactly! I'd love to pay for such a product. Even better if they don't reinvent the wheel and instead just polish OsmAnd that can almost do more things than any individual person can ever know about.
I often have to use a third party to convert address to GPS coordinates.
"open" - 19 results
"open-source" - 4 results
The "open-source" refers to using other's open-source data, no mention of TomTom's.
e.g.
"The world lacks a truly open and collaborative mapping ecosystem, one that doesn’t follow a one-size-fits-all model but is flexible so that businesses can build according to their needs. One that fosters collaboration, data sharing and open innovation."
What does "open" really mean in their doublespeak?
Put all that aside, the battery went bad just around a year, it becomes even slower after each firmware upgrade. But what really p*ssed me off was their explanation to lifetime map updates.
What they do need is really someone with better vision and ethics I would say.
To be fair, it has become much better and AFAIK it uses TomTom data.
This announcement is a master class of marketing blurp with nuggets like "accelerated innovation" and low on actual content.
Seems like they are on early access with important-enough customers.
From the FAQs at https://www.tomtom.com/tomtom-maps-platform/:
> I don’t want to use the new maps with OSM, will my application continue to work if I use an older library version?
> Yes. Although we encourage you to switch to the new enhanced map to take full advantage of the new map features integrated by the OSM community.
This update is light on details around licensing of the new map.
...haven't really heard or thought or cared about poor TomTom since then though.
That to me was groundbreaking.
ViziCities was such a fun adventure and something that I'd like to pick up again at some point, or at least some sort of successor. The ecosystem for spatial visualisation on the Web has changed dramatically since I created ViziCities so I'd love to see what's possible using today's technology.
I suppose it is good that they finally noticed.
Of course it’ll eventually lead to GTA VR ugh but I can at least get what I want…blasting a Jesko on the Dallas north tollway at full chat
Many of their devices have Lifetime Maps support and it's probably costing them too much, since they're not getting paid for the updates.
BTW Garmin has been using OpenStreetMap for a LONG time.
… full of words, and absolutely no information.
Even the linked page (https://www.tomtom.com/tomtom-maps-platform/) really doesn’t make it even remotely clear what they’re announcing, or why we should care.
> The world lacks a truly open and collaborative mapping ecosystem, one that doesn’t follow a one-size-fits-all model but is flexible so that businesses can build according to their needs
What does that even mean?
I’ll tell you what it means: no, our API pricing for whatever this service is will not be public, not be self serve and not be for small time developers to play with.
Ah wait, I get it!
> With its new map, TomTom is using AI and machine-learning techniques to speed up the process and make a much greater volume of changes in a much smaller period of time. With the masses of data used, the quality of the new map will be a step above what’s currently available on the market
I see! You’re going to compete with google maps and others but you’re going to pour The AI Machine Learning on your offering to make it better than the others.
…well, I guess we’ll see how it goes.
That approach (same as everyone but we have AI!!!??!?…?) is really a bad business model.
The problem is that everyone is doing it; and only a very small number of people are doing it at a level that makes any meaningful difference, and for those companies it’s a core competency, not a value add.
So this was an announcement of an announcement…
> a flexible thing that businesses can build on according to their needs.
And if you go to their dev website... you can find the pricing for their current APIs/SDKs... So it's not like they're hiding it.
As someone who used TomTom before other options became available I can honestly say that it was an absolute nightmare. The small handheld devices took ages before loading up, had bad GPS reception and could only live on battery for 1.5 hours or so. Maps needed to be updated quarterly and would often not fit on the SD CARD. TomTom charged something in the order of 75 euro per map update.
When Google Maps became a viable alternative TomTom continued with the same business model, same paid map updates, same shitty bloatware necessary for map updates etc.. I don't understand the HN sentiment. Things were no better 15 years ago. Google Maps works. It works always. It accurate and uptodate. Dont like Google? There are plenty of OSM apps in store.
But that’s scary. I want a competitor that offers at least roughly similar quality, but Google is so far ahead that it’s no contest.
Some of problems I've had with Google Maps recently:
- Routing gives me weird bypasses that aren't necessary and often actually add time to the trip. I've started to not trust the routing.
- The UX when searching for places is extremely difficult to navigate, especially when trying to use map view instead of list view
- planning a route _without_ asking for directions is near impossible because many street and landmark names are not displayed
- Landmarks are drowned out by the overwhelming clutter of business names (paid ads)
- Maps are sometimes wrong in my area and I have no idea how to get them fixed.
I've started using OsmAnd for most of my mapping needs lately, and it's better in almost every way _as a map_. The only major thing it's lacking for me is traffic-aware navigation.
At least for walking and cycling, OSM has data leagues better than Gmaps. Also for driving actually, but navigation is indeed not as good. Lack of traffic info...
With so many iPhones and Apple Maps being an smoother experience (Siri/OS integration), it definitely competes heavily with Google (at least in US).
Probably due to all the OSM data they include, in fairness.
How will that happen realistically? The truth is it's impossible to compete with ad-funded tech giants in the current state of affairs.
For that to change two things are needed:
1 . government intervention to break up Google ads from their maps and other businesses, leveling the playing field for their competitors who aren't making money via ads (not really gonna happen in the US, but maybe ... wink wink EU)
2. consumers now being OK with having to pay market prices for subscriptions to essential services like maps, email, etc. that they got used to getting for free through their personal data monetization (also not really gonna happen because people don't like paying for stuff they used to get for free and also many people can't afford to pay)
Want an open source facebook / twitter? Here you go: https://qbix.com/platform
Google search is also in a similar position - the vast amount of users means its competitors just cannot improve their product because users become disappointed with the quality and stop using it, thus denying them a chance to improve their product.
The old solution to prevent anti-competitive behaviour and foster healthy capitalism was to break them up. But for more modern problems like this, I think a different approach is also needed - we need to force such monopolies to also share their data with the competitors, till the competitors become large enough to compete with them on their own.
(For those seeking a decent alternatives to Google Maps, I recommend Here - https://wego.here.com/ - it was owned by Nokia before they sold it to a consortium of European automobile manufacturers and is quite good).
For a maps company the map is the service they offer, for Google is just a data gathering service
wishful thinking, I know.
But companies, uber, lyft, carmakers, location intelligence firms etc need commercial mapping and location tech. What TomTom offers exists more for these people than the end consumer these days.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20734665
DonHopkins on Aug 19, 2019 | parent | next [–]
When I was at TomTom, they ran a contest for employees to come up with fun ways to gamify their internet-connected GPS Personal Navigation Devices.
Some wise guy came up with the brilliant idea of maintaining a real-time "Top 10 Speeders" leaderboard for every single road on the entire map. Kinda like Foursquare for speeding on local roads. No matter where you were driving in the world, you could instantly see the top ten speeds of other TomTom users who drove down that same stretch of road, and put the pedal to the metal to claim or defend your own spot on the leaderboard!
That one went over like a lead balloon with the legal department.
The only thing worse would be a chat app for texting while driving above the speed limit with other Leaderboard members along the same stretch of road.
They also didn't appreciate my proposal for TomTomagotchi: a simulated personality on your PND that relentlessly begs you to drive it all around town to various interesting places it wants to visit, to improve its mood and satisfy its cravings. (Kind of like having virtual kids!) I'm sure there's a revenue model having drive through Burger Kings and car washes pay for placements.
(Source: making web maps is my career. I don't touch Google Maps professionally but use it a lot personally.)
Natural monopolies (such as the one acquired by Google) are not bad as long as government retains the monopoly of B2 bombers.
It's not really a monopoly when it can be ended at a moment's notice
I don't want Google to know all websites I visit. I don't want it to know all websites I visit, which have a map widget on them. I don't want Google to have knowledge about where I am going and when I am going anywhere. Websites for example using Google maps will indirectly enable Google to actually know these things. For example if I want to book a hotel and I want to know, how I get there from the next public transport station (or if I had a car, how I drive there). If it is a Google maps widget, data about what location I am viewing will be available to Google. Google being Google, I have no doubt, that they will try to use that for profiling people.
Relying on a becoming a monopoly does not help with freedom. The fact, that uninformed developers introduce dependencies to Google products without a second thought, makes them uninformed indirect helpers of a spying company, whose profit is based on profiling people and tracking people online, to show them pesky ads. It exposes us to the whims of a capitalistically motivated tech giant, which does not have our best interest at heart. That is, why we need alternatives. That is why at least initially any alternative based on non-Google things, is a good thing. The fewer people make use of Google (dis)services the better for all of us, because they wont have the same power over our lives.
So the whole "before Google it was better" thing, is actually a "before evil tech giant monopoly" thing.
Also, I refuse to use Google Maps as I am loath to let Google know my travel history. I am, however, somewhat concerned that TomTom uploads my travel history to their servers, since my device has LTE/3G capability. This was used to fetch congestion information and to offer a smarter / faster route, but since I don't have a subscription the service stopped after a free trial period.
Can someone explain to me why it's a problem? (I make the assumption that even if google doesn't do it, your carrier does, so it doesn't add anything additional to "government's ability to repress/harass".)
They do, or at least they used to before the GDPR came into action. Not sure what the situation is like now.
The incumbents don't have the crutch of the other business unit and can't price match, and go out of business.
Then the monopolist raises prices and there's no competition and no alternative.
It's fine, though google maps has gotten pretty bad; I'll just switch back to Waze.
Google Maps on my phone works fine, and on my current Pixel 5A, I can navigate off battery for a three or four hours. Plenty of walking time to hit multiple points in a day of walking.
Maybe some day the TomTom app will be competitive with Google maps, but for now, Google maps is the reference by which all other mapping will be judged.
How do you compete against "free" from companies that are able to build monopolies with the help of institutions?
It's easy to say "it was shit before google", when innovations weren't available
> When Google Maps became a viable alternative TomTom continued with the same business model, same paid map updates, same shitty bloatware necessary for map updates etc..
I agree with that one, they didn't adapt
I use google maps sdk on mobile because generally the data is much better quality for POI than Apple Maps, but doing geocoding is a lot more expensive so that’s where I use TomTom. Seems to work fine for me so far.
I now use the TomTom Android app and it's better than any other app or device I have used. Good maps, with clear instructions and great traffic information.
But the software side ... oh boy. The "Garmin Explore" service this device is intended to work with looks like something from 2004. I mean not a finished product from 2004. But a proof of concept or minimal viable product from 2004. Usability is terrible. Planing trips/routes on the device is torture. Using the web interface isn't much better. (I'd link a screenshot but the service seems to be down ... again lol).
Sync breaks all the time. It's triggered by "bad" filenames for the .gpx files. Some special chars seem to break syncing so bad that the device won't sync at all until you delete the offending file in the cloud - but there's no error message. One day you just wonder why your recent route you planned in the browser isn't on the device. So you go to the sync tab and there's a message like "Last sync: 3_weeks_ago". Have fun fixing this as a normal person. (This bug also comes up when a route has a wrong count of waypoints ... it's not too many waypoints, it seems to be a number between too few and too many). I only figured this out by accident. Garmin support told me to reset the device and make a new account. (Which meant I lost all my tracks).
Now if Garmin did work on the software and provided updates I wouldn't be so salty. But there has been 0 improvements to the software side of things since the device was released like 3 years ago. ZERO. All you get is map updates which are for the street navigation side of things. The "overlanding" part? Forget it. There has been 0 bug fixes, 0 new features, nothing.
I guess you're supposed to buy the new (more expensive) Garmin device that recently came out. As if I would give Garmin one more Euro.
It's not even incompetence. It's maliciousness. They have a line up of wireless cameras (which you mount to your vehicle's bumper, etc). The cams connect via WiFi to the navigation device. Recently Garmin released a new camera - one which I'de find rather useful as it's small and works completely via battery and you can clip to the license plate. So you don't have to wire anything and can take it easily off when you don't need it.
But guess what - not compatible with my 700 Euro Android Tablet that could be made totally compatible via a software update if Garmin just wanted to. If you want to use the new cam: Buy the new 1200 Euro navi model. Oh, btw. some of the the older cameras won't work with the new device ... so you better buy a new set of new cameras.
I hope Garmin goes bankrupt. Sincerely.
/edit: I switched to the Gaia GPS app running on an iPad mini. Waaaay better experience.
And it works. It works always (even more than GMaps because it's offline first). It's also accurate. And up to date.
People are sometimes curious about it, and comparing it to Wikipedia is the best way to explain the importance of it.
Good maps are incredibly important. Separating that from financial incentives is necessary.
I edited something, one month later someone reverted it back without any explanation.
And the UX for discussion is even worse than on Wikipedia, which is saying something. So I have no idea why it was reverted, no idea how to contact the guy and no mood to investigate.
So my street has a wrong name and I am too lazy to change it
The issue is the car vendors do not want to surrender their navigation and entertainment to Google and Apple as navigation system options at >$1500 and ongoing updates are precious margin and recurring revenue that they all desire.
With Android Auto or CarPlay they give that all up.
They are both dead men walking but like to do a full court press like this every few years to remind us all they still have the lights on.
"There’s also significant talk about how the company will use OSM data. It’s clear TomTom is treading cautiously and respectfully here.".
That's something you might expect to read in an article written by an independent journalist, not a corporate press release written by in-house staff.
That’s a press release writing best practice. Your goal is to match the journalistic writing style as closely as possible, all the while still transporting all the messages you want to transport. Make it easy for the journalist to be lazy. It has been this way since basically forever because PR writers know that journalists are under a lot of time pressure and often don’t even have the resources to write everything from scratch. So you offer them something that’s hard to resist …
I guess the web has sort of muddied the waters there (with companies being able to publish press releases on their own websites) but the intended target audience of press releases are actually journalists. In the past companies usually had no way of publishing and distributing news about themselves on their own. (And, to be honest, press releases on their own website still aren’t the best publishing platform.)
Great, so they'll suck open street map data, but won't contribute back.
IMO if someone wants to compete against Google Maps, then the Chromium open source strategy ought to work well against them. Many players building on an open source map. Not just roads, but full 3D meshes, building annotations, internal maps of public buildings e.g airports e.t.c
Cruise has started rolling our driverless cars in SF at night. Their strategy is mapping all of SF at centimeter accuracy and having every car have a fresh map as it drives around.
For me, that feels like the future of mapping. A fresh map of the world at centimeter accuracy, then hierarchical layers of abstraction with lesser details.
They already are.
> Same as apple, they'll build their own map in a private walled garden and suck bits off OSM but won't contribute back.
They already are and have for years.
Damn, somebody should tell them about OpenStreetMap
