"While it is obvious that this maneuver creates a problem for the multi-billion dollar GPS market, it also poses real challenges for the leading smart phone players – RIM’s Blackberry and Apple’s iPhone. Without access to their own mapping data, these vendors now face an interesting dilemma. Do you risk flying naked without free navigation or do you suck it up and swallow the above average royalty fee for each and every handset? Neither option is stellar. This problem isn’t nearly as daunting as the one now faced by the Windows Mobile and Symbian teams. As software providers, they are lucky to get a per unit royalty equal to that extracted by the GPS data guys. If they are now forced to integrate this data merely to keep their product competitive, their gross margin just went negative. Ouch!" - Bret Taylor from Bookmarklet

I would love to be a fly on the wall in Redmond - Ray Cromwell

I'm psyched to get Google maps powered navigation. they provide much better directions than tom tom ever could... and if they calculate live traffic as well thats good. but i'm curious as to why Verizon doesn't seem to mind since their nav package is normally $15/month. - Matt Ellsworth

My experience with Google has been completely different. They were notably subpar when they stopped licensing the leader in map data a year or two ago, and their directions now are as bad or worse than MapQuest. I split the difference now between them and a GPS unit when I need to, but generally prefer to use an actual map for most accurate directions. - Cole Jolley

I think this is likely to change in a big way once they fully leverage their Street View database. Still, I can't argue with free when the errors are few IMHO. - Ray Cromwell

Is this an example of "open" systems putting people out of business? (of course, it's not personal, it's just business..." - Cliff Gerrish

What I really don't understand is: why are there so many lost people? - LogEx from iPhone

Does Google actually make any money from their maps? How many Google behaviors are enabled by their huge search revenues and how many of those can continue as their dominance wanes? Also as the article mentions Nokia owns Navteq so the "Symbian" problem is a non issue (unless you think there is a viable Symbian outside of a Nokia context). - Hayes Haugen

Now the droid initiative on verizon finally makes sense to me. I watched the demos as they showed off feature after feature that verizon likes to charge extra for thinking no way is this not going to be expensive. But with google paying verizon on search ad revenue, verizon doesn't have to nickel and dime their customers for every added feature. - dthree

"I would love to be a fly on the wall in Redmond" - things may be just as interesting in Cupertino. - John Craft

Google's move is similar to MSFT's free browser play. - Cliff Gerrish

I'm wondering how Apple's purchase of PlaceBace is going to play out. Are they going to ditch Google Maps on the iPhone? - Matt Mastracci

I also have issue with the "less than free" thing as a new disruptive thing. Pay-to-play on a platform or a device is not new (e.g. anti-virus software). - Hayes Haugen

@hayes yes, you're darn rite about Navteq thingie... - A.T.