Google competitors announced a project to make freely available data sets for map features to be built into online offerings.
Alphabet-owned Google dominates online mapping, selling its services to other companies or platforms and leveraging location and navigation capabilities to improve its other offerings, such as online advertising.
The nonprofit Linux Foundation announced the formation of the Overture Maps Foundation by Meta, Microsoft, TomTom, and Amazon Web Services, with the goal of making comprehensive mapping data openly available for use by whoever may require it.
“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,” said Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin.
“Industry needs to come together to do this for the benefit of all.”
Google was conspicuously absent from the list of companies collaborating in Overture, which stated that its goal is to increase membership in order to accelerate progress.
By the middle of next year, the coalition hoped to have released its first mapping datasets.
“Immersive experiences, which understand and blend into your physical environment, are critical to the embodied internet of the future,” Maps at Meta engineering director Jan Erik Solem said in the release.
“By delivering interoperable open map data, Overture provides the foundation for an open metaverse built by creators, developers, and businesses alike.”
According to the Linux Foundation, map data is already used in applications such as search, navigation, logistics, games, and autonomous driving.
According to the Linux Foundation, Overture map data will be open source, which means developers will be able to not only use it but also build on it.
