Op-ed: Duopoly in digital mapping – Can web3 be the answer?

The following is a guest post from Ali Husain, an advisor at Navigate.

While Web3 has offered an alternative to the dominance of Big Tech firms in many aspects of the technology sector, it has yet to overcome the duopoly dominance of Google Maps and Apple Maps in the digital mapping market. According to a report by Gitnux, this duopoly is maintained by the existing strength of Google and Apple’s market share and by their significant resources, allowing them to develop features like Google Street View to the extent that other projects cannot compete.

The dominance of these two companies has also forced others in Big Tech to come together to penetrate the market. Companies including Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon have agreed to form the Overture Maps Foundation to challenge the dominance of Google and Apple in the digital mapping space. In this context, where even some of the most influential Big Tech companies are struggling to gain a solid foothold, can Web3 provide the means to bring greater competition and innovation to the digital mapping market?

How is Big Tech domination depriving innovators?

Big Tech’s dominance of the market has driven up costs for innovators. For example, Google and Apple Maps do not provide access to their underlying data. In terms of Google Maps, app developers pay fees to Google via the Google Maps API per thousand Google Maps searches. Apple charges developers for using MapKit JS to embed its map directly into their websites and applications.

These maps’ street view features are also often outdated, especially in more remote areas outside of urban centers. Although there is room for improvement, very few firms can match the resources of the tech behemoths, and as such, both Google and Apple have little incentive to update the quality of their services in these more remote areas.

This adds another layer of cost to the start-up process for many entrepreneurs at a time in the business development process where financial resources are limited. The Overture Maps Foundation is attempting to offer developers a cheaper alternative but still only provides underlying data. There is a pressing need

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Author: Ali Husain

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