Google Maps Open-Source Challenger MapBox Raises $10M From Foundry Group

[chatman]

Stupid title. Even MapBox might agree they don't compete with Google Maps. They are here to make OSM awesome, and hats off to MapBox for what they've done so far.

[hackula1]

They most certainly do. I got a quote from Google for commercial maps use a few weeks ago. 17.5k/yr an up. Mapbox seems like a good alternative for serious web mapping. Google Maps is still pretty week in B2B type mapping though. Esri is the real competitor here.

[aw3c2]

They do compete with Google Map tiles. And so far that seems to be their biggest factor of financial income, at least looking from the outside.

[stugrey]

Their TileMill software is great. You don't have to sign up to have them serve your maps, you can use all of their tools to generate your tilesets and do what you like with them (obviously attributing your data set source). The MapBox iOS SDK is another stand out contribution from these guys.

[hnha]

Some of their free offerings are so great that i sometimes worry they might be (maybe unintended) in a "embrace, extend" phase, extinguishing competitors left and right. Their uprise is insane.

[joekrill]

I love MapBox -- I am a happy paying customer -- but the title seems a little misleading: what is open source about them? They source their data from OpenStreetMap, which is open-source, but MapBox themselves is not. Or am I missing something?

[untog]

They have a lot of open source code:

https://github.com/mapbox/

and it is possible to run the exact setup they charge you for on your own servers using that code. They're basically as open source as a SaaS company could be.

[mnutt]

They open source a lot of their software. Check out tilemill:

https://www.mapbox.com/tilemill/

[dougmccune]

as others have pointed out, their map authoring tool, TileMill is open source, as well as many other projects (iD for editing OSM, mapnik is heavily authored by MapBox engineers, etc). But it goes quite a bit beyond even that. Their tile hosting software is mostly open source as well, which they call TileStream. Without too much trouble you can actually recreate the bulk of their SaaS hosting offering using their open source code base. So their SaaS offering is pretty close to fully open source. They're starting to move into premium data (ie satellite data after a natural disaster), so obviously that stuff isn't going to be open, but it is pretty impressive how much of their entire stack they develop on github.

[incanus77]

https://github.com/mapbox/

"156 public repos"

[jusben1369]

I wonder how much this is simply about startups not wanting to rely on Google. Even Apple felt uncomfortable relying on their maps product. So much smaller startups probably hate that dependency too.

[mw67]

Problem is Google map isn't much customisable, and when you do lot of dev involving maps then only affordable solution is Mapbox.

[hackula1]

I am sure it is partly due to the fact that this is way cheaper than google maps or esri for heavy commercial use.

[mourner]

It's more about startups wanting to rely on open data and open source vs proprietary.

[wensing]

If your app uses maps, it's time to get on board the MapBox rocket. Resistance is futile.

[andrewxhill]

The mapbox team is fantastic, this is totally great news for all of them, the mapping community, and map users. Can't wait to see what they come up with next

[mourner]

That's going to seriously shake the mapping space. MapBox is quite an unstoppable force now.

[pidg]

I saw their CEO speak at an event in Geneva last month - went in having not heard of MapBox, came out impressed. It's a really cool model - particularly the way that corrections made to a map by a FourSquare user, for example would be instantly reflected to a user on Uber.

[rajeemcariazo]

What happened to OpenStreetMap?

[tommorris]

MapBox is to OpenStreetMap as Ubuntu is to Linux.

MapBox provide hosted tiles, beautiful designed custom tiles and a bunch of nice tools (including iD, the in-browser editor). OpenStreetMap provide the community-maintained dataset. MapBox have been very supportive of the OSM community in terms of donations, sponsorship of events, use of office space and so on.

The point is if you are Foursquare and you want to start using OpenStreetMap, MapBox will give you commercial support and design services and so on. OpenStreetMap (the community, the non-profit Foundation etc.) won't.

[llimllib]

Nothing. Mapbox are quite large supporters of OSM; they wrote the iD editor for it.

http://ideditor.com/

[sztanko]

Mapbox is awesome. Speaking of their tile maps, there are two things that make them less competitive compared to Google: geocoding and street view. While nominatim is fantastic, it is nearly not as good as google maps search, which has people employed full time to update company listings, etc. There are many companies that depend on search so much they are willing to stick to google maps.

[oscargrouch]

I just hope they dont fall down as a option when Google come up with a buy offer..

For users, developers and the society in general, competition and options are a good thing..

I cant say i didnt feel sad when Waze was bought.. with more time and effort no product would bare to stand against it

[anonemouscoward]

MapBox is a ridiculous joke until they start supporting building numbers.

(Yes, they know of this limitation, but they deliberately cripple their product because of 'typographical clarity' or somesuch bullshit.)

[mapmeld]

Do you mean adding building numbers to the map (similar to the OSM Mapnik tiles?) This is something you can do yourself in TileMill and then overlay onto MapBox Streets or other tiles.

[untog]

The product isn't a joke just because it doesn't support the one minor feature you want. I use it and love it.