Competitors of tech giant Google on Thursday announced the creation of the Overture Maps Foundation, which aims to put the data needed to create maps online for free.
Alphabet and its Google subsidiary dominate the online mapping market with Google Maps, selling its services to other companies or platforms, and using its location and navigation capabilities to power its other products, including online advertising.
Meta (Facebook, Instagram…), Microsoft, TomTom and Amazon Web Services are among the founding members of this alliance. The goal: to make map data more accessible to the general public so that they can be used by everyone, according to a statement by the Linux Foundation.
“Mapping the physical environment and every community around the world, even as they grow and change, is a challenge so complex that no single organization can tackle it alone,” said the Foundation’s Linux Executive Director Jim Zemlin.
The tech industry “needs to come together and do this for the benefit of all,” he added.
Google was notably absent from the list of companies for Overture to ally with, which wants to expand its membership to accelerate its progress.
The coalition hopes to release its first map datasets by mid-2023.
“Immersive experiences that understand and blend into your physical environment are essential to the embodied internet of the future,” said Jan Erik Solem, Engineering Director of Meta Maps, in the statement, referring to Metaverse, a parallel universe created by seen by some as the future of online technology.
“By providing open, interoperable map data, Overture provides the foundation for an open metaverse being built by creators, developers, and enterprises,” he added.
Map data is already being used in tools for research, navigation, logistics, gaming, autonomous driving and more, says the Linux Foundation.
Overture’s map data will be “open source,” meaning developers can not only freely use it, but also build more upon it, the Linux Foundation said.