All signs indicate that Google is gearing up to be a competitor of Navteq and Teleatlas by using a combination of StreetView, Crowd sourcing and government data. Google just dropped Teleatlas map data usage in the United States and is now using Google data only. In 2008 Google dropped Navteq for US coverage. Both Navteq and Teleatlas have been rumored to be tough to work with, insist on complicated licensing agreements and are very expensive. Both Navteq (owned by Nokia) and teleatlas (owned by TomTom) are also at heavy conflict with their data licensees because they also produce hardware and compete with their customers like Garmin. Readwriteweb has details of some recent Google changes.

This may make for better tech and lower prices but this still leaves the problem that there isn't a free and open solution. We need a passive, free, open crowd sourced global map solution. Open street maps, Google and others don't offer that.

While we are talking about crowd sourcing and Google, checkout our post on Google Crowd sourcing 3d buildings and map repairs (video below)
Talk about this in our crowd sourced map forums.

Today on Google's blog, Google announced the release of an application called Google Building Maker to crowd source 3d building data. This will pave the way for some really interesting navigation and turn by turn applications. Is this going to be as addictive as Google implies in this video? Talk about this in our map crowd sourcing forums.

• The validation and realignment of 116,000 kilometers (72,000 miles) of secondary roads in the United States, a complement to the existing freeway network already in the database;
• The validation and realignment of approximately 25,000 kilometers (15,500 miles) in Germany, covering the country’s entire freeway network; and
• The addition of more than 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) of new road geometry in Ireland and more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) in Turkey.
• More Details in the press release here.

If you have never heard of crowd sourced maps, checkout our previous blog post here or an example of a growing Philippine map in timelapse.

Navit is an open source turn by turn directions app using the free Open Street Maps.

There has been a lot of discussion about community generated maps. Cloudmade and openstreetmap have made immense progress, but their big drawback is that it required active user input to have the data be routable or reliable. Teleatlas has jumpstarted community generated maps by releasing a paid passively generated database that has been created and augmented by free passive user inputs. (teleatlas press release )

In this Youtube interview Rik Temmink boasts 7 million reports in 18 months which have generated 1 trillion gps measurements on the road network. He describes the beauty of passive user inputs.