Meta, Microsoft, Others Launch Overture Maps Foundation To Create Open, Interoperable Map Data

To challenge Google's hegemony in the mapping industry, the Linux Foundation has teamed up with some of the top technological businesses in the world to create open, interoperable map data.

The new initiative, called the Overture Maps Foundation, is formally hosted by the Linux Foundation, but it is also supported by Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Facebook's parent corporation Meta, and the Dutch mapping firm TomTom.

With each member contributing their own data and resources, the Overture Maps Foundation's ultimate goal is to enable new map products with openly accessible information that can be utilised and reused across applications and enterprises.

“Mapping the physical environment and every community in the world, even as they grow and change, is a massively complex challenge that no one organization can manage,” noted the Linux Foundation’s executive director Jim Zemlin in a press release.

“Industry needs to come together to do this for the benefit of all.”

Modern society depends so heavily on map and location data, which is used in everything from self-driving cars and IoT (internet of things) gadgets to logistics and big data visualisation tools.

In terms of what businesses can do with the data and the features, they have access to, as well as the expenses associated with licencing it, having all that data under the control of just one or two mega-firms may be extremely restricting.

Additionally, the spatial mapping will be essential for cutting-edge technologies like those needed for the Metaverse, in which Meta is significantly involved.

“Immersive experiences, which understand and blend into your physical environment, are critical to the embodied internet of the future,” added Jan Erik Solem, engineering director for Maps at Meta.

“By delivering interoperable open map data, Overture provides the foundation for an open metaverse built by creators, developers, and businesses alike.”

Among the founding members of the Overture Maps Foundation, Google is conspicuously absent.

It is likely evidence of Google's monopoly over the mapping industry that such well-known companies and archrivals from the technology sector are joining forces.

Google has slowly consolidated its position since introducing its Android mobile operating system about fifteen years ago.

Additionally, the simultaneous release of the iPhone, which put maps and navigation in the hands of millions of people worldwide, had a significant impact on market leaders like TomTom, which had made a significant profit from installing physical navigation devices on car windshields.

TomTom’s shares since the launch of Android and iOS 15 years ago

The graph demonstrates how TomTom's stock price fell as the modern smartphone age began.

In the intervening years, TomTom has made an effort to advance, forming data and map collaborations with companies like Uber and Microsoft, as well as focusing on developers via SDKs and going after acquisitions to support its plans for autonomous vehicles.

But the fact is that, for the most part, Google and its mapping empire continue to dominate the roost, something that this new alliance will help to solve.

“Collaborative mapmaking is central to TomTom’s strategy — the Overture Maps Foundation provides the framework to accelerate our goals,” TomTom CEO Harold Goddijn noted in a press release.

“TomTom’s Maps Platform will leverage the combination of the Overture base map, a broad range of other data, and TomTom’s proprietary data in a continuously integrated and quality-controlled product that serves a broad range of use cases, including the most demanding applications like advanced navigation, search, and automated driving.”

The creation of this new foundation is consistent with trends in other areas of technology, where societal and legal forces are driving an increase in the use of decentralised and interoperable social networks.

To counter the closed payment ecosystems promoted by corporate behemoths like Google and Apple, the Linux Foundation recently unveiled the OpenWallet Foundation to create interoperable digital wallets.

The announcement made on Thursday fits squarely within that larger trend.

The founding firms intend to participate in cooperative map-building initiatives, fusing information from numerous open data sources and transforming it into a format suitable for usage in production systems and applications.

This will involve utilising both publicly available data provided by towns as well as data from well-established projects like OpenStreetMap.

Although there are now only four member companies, there are plans to expand the group in the future to include any business with a direct stake in open map data.

As of now, the Overture Maps Foundation stated that it is working toward the initial datasets, which would comprise "basic" layers including roads, buildings, and administrative information, being released in the first half of 2023.

This will eventually contain more locations, routing and navigation, and 3D building information.