Uber Now Has Its Own Fleet of Mapping Vehicles

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Uber has its own feet of mapping vehicles now. The company says the data will be used for routing and ETA calculations.

After an image appeared on Facebook of an Uber car rigged up with some exotic sensing equipment, the on-demand taxi company admitted to TechCrunch that it’s running a fleet of mapping vehicles, and even released the picture above.
 
oohh.. nice. opening up whole new avenues for lawsuits

like they dont have enough already
 
Why?

Why spend the money on this?

I would think that Google maps is plenty good.
 
cyclone3d said:
Why?

Why spend the money on this?

I would think that Google maps is plenty good.
Click to expand...

So much this. Google already knows...well...everything and anything from your current body temp and how it reacts to the texts you're sending to your mistress to the time it takes to get from anywhere to anyplace else for any possible mode of transportation. It's been watching forever. Stop trying to find out for yourself and just submit to the all-knowing Google.
 
cyclone3d said:
Why?

Why spend the money on this?

I would think that Google maps is plenty good.
Click to expand...

Why don't you understand that the market for a good is never about how many producers there are for it, but how many consumers.

I would suspect that uber can produce a product without representing competition in many fields that google does. So buying from them is not funding a direct competitor to start. Lots of people consume map data, there's room for more than one vendor.
 
raz-0 said:
Why don't you understand that the market for a good is never about how many producers there are for it, but how many consumers.

I would suspect that uber can produce a product without representing competition in many fields that google does. So buying from them is not funding a direct competitor to start. Lots of people consume map data, there's room for more than one vendor.
Click to expand...

I agree with you there.. but the article says this is going to be used for arrival and transit time estimates. There is no mention anywhere of them planning on selling a mapping product.

Upon looking at the Google maps API, it looks like it is free for both Android and iOS.

Again, I don't see why they are spending money on this if they are only going to use it for what is stated in the article.
 
They don't want to rely on Google. This is about owning their data and mapping data is an incredibly valuable resource.
 
cyclone3d said:
I agree with you there.. but the article says this is going to be used for arrival and transit time estimates. There is no mention anywhere of them planning on selling a mapping product.

Upon looking at the Google maps API, it looks like it is free for both Android and iOS.

Again, I don't see why they are spending money on this if they are only going to use it for what is stated in the article.
Click to expand...

Because nothing in the history of business has ever been expanded beyond the initial scope.

Google charges once you exceed a certain number of requests to the map api.
 
raz-0 said:
Google charges once you exceed a certain number of requests to the map api.
Click to expand...

That's interesting.

I haven't used Uber, but are the driver forced to use a maps interface through the Uber app? Otherwise I don't see how a single driver could use Google Maps enough to incur a fee (or maybe I'm underestimating the usage)?
 
Xrave said:
That's interesting.

I haven't used Uber, but are the driver forced to use a maps interface through the Uber app? Otherwise I don't see how a single driver could use Google Maps enough to incur a fee (or maybe I'm underestimating the usage)?
Click to expand...

Not the end user, the app. You have a cool map api toy, you get a response from the api for free until you hit a certain volume. Then google locks you out until you cough up money. It'd be uber paying for it, not the drivers. At least that was the way it worked a couple years ago. Then there is actually selling/licensing the data to not use it via the api on googles servers. The satellite data you can buy from a few suppliers. Street level images not so much.
 
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