Here Now
- Thread starter bobpbx
- Start date
Actually it's just "Here", without the "Now".
You don't have to be very old to remember Navteq, which was the company that supplied map data to Garmin. Navteq was bought by Nokia and they changed the name to HERE (which I never liked). HERE ended up being acquired by a consortium of Mercedes, BMW and Audi.Of course, that doesn't answer your question, but I find it interesting. I'm a registered HERE developer, which is free. Their maps are not free but you get a monthly quota of free tiles. That quota is very generous IMO, and boydsmaps typically only uses about 10% of it. Really, they don't seem to place a lot of value on the maps and imagery, their premium products are search, points of interest and routing. I could add a navigation feature to boydsmaps, you could search for things and get turn-by-turn directions, but that would cost me real money, which is one reason I'm not doing it (the other is I don't want to be liable for a bad route that sends you off a cliff, or whatever).
If I exceed their quota, there are different levels of monthly paid plans available. But it's not quite clear to me whether they would even give me more map tiles, it is primarily for the other services. The Mapbox maps have a similar structure and I like their satellite imagery, which comes from MAXAR (HERE gets their imagery from Digital Globe).
Google has a similar policy regarding free map tiles. However there's a significant difference - with Google you actually have to give them a credit card when you register. As long as you're under the monthly quota, you will never be charged. But if you somehow exceed the quota, your card will be automatically billed. This was a policy change a number of years back, and Ben was concerned that NJPB maps would start to cost him money. But (AFAIK) that still hasn't happened, because the quota is also pretty generous.