The more pedestrian reason for Google's investment for its own maps was that the licensing costs for data to use in turn-by-turn navigation, which is many times as expensive compared to simpler uses, were going to skyrocket once mobile adoption took off as projected.
You could give millions or billions to TomTom, which is what Apple has been doing, or you could pour the same amounts into creating your own datasets, allowing you to do a lot more than navigation, i.e. anything.
I think they understood the economics of depending on an external source for a core part of their business. Much like Netflix, they understood that the way forward was to generate their own content.
I think Apple understands that, too. They just have a different core business (or at least, they think they have. That’s where I think they may be mistaken. AI is where the puck will be). They design their own hardware, including CPUs and have extensive partnerships with chip producers (paying them to build factories, for example).
For maps, they are rumored to have cars driving around to collect data, but they clearly aren’t there yet, and even if they are investing heavily, may never catch up with Google.
netflix realized that content delivery is no longer a core part of the business when they stopped sending out DVDs in the mail.
instead, they've spent all their energies since on amassing the most lucrative content they can. this is why they started making their own original series and why disney has (implicitly) made the argument that they should be allowed to buy fox.
same as in the UPS & fedex example. the trucks are not core to the business. efficient logistics is.
It's still the only way to watch many movies & TV shows. There's just so much not available on Netflix/Prime/Hulu/Play, or not available on streaming at all.
Netflix's AWS purchases are commodity -- their customers would not suffer if they migrated away from AWS, either in product quality or price. Not so for Apple Maps and TomTom.
Generating their own content and being fully self-sufficient are two different things. It's not like Amazon can claim all of the Netflix Original Series as theirs. I think you're trying to die on a technical hill in opposition to a non-tech point. That's not the point the post is making.
They have a gentleman's agreement with Amazon–like Apple does with Samsung. It's mutually beneficial for both parties so there's no point antagonizing each other.
The reason why AWS isn't a threat is that AWS is a platform and doesn't have any screws to turn against Netflix - they can't raise prices to fight against Netflix because AWS hosts many other customers, and Netflix has a lot of choices when it comes to infrastructure.
On the other hand, Netflix's partnerships with movie studios is very one-sided one for them - there is no substitute for a blockbuster movie, so movie studios have a lot of leverage when talking to Netflix. Generally speaking, in this kind of relationship, the content providers will raise their prices to squeeze all profit out of the transaction with the customer. See also the difficulty with music streaming - the record industry has done the exact same thing already, the video industry is only a few years behind. Netflix saw the writing on the wall quite some time ago.
Along with the other arguments here, there's nothing absolutely unique (in terms of Netflix business/products) that AWS brings. The same service could be built on any cloud platform, or an in-house platform if they wanted. It would be a pain to migrate, sure, but it wouldn't fundamentally change their business.
If AWS kicked them off tomorrow, that would definitely be disruptive, but the chances of that happening are almost nil as Amazon would lose significant revenue, goodwill, and almost certainly face a lawsuit and maybe even an anti-trust investigation.
They didn't have to look far for examples; I'm sure amongst Google, many employees felt bad when Google Reader got discontinued. Or hundred of other Google-owned projects.
I think Google is not seeking power for power or money for money. Google's focus is AI. Google needs the full view of people behaviour in order to build AI. Traveling is a good domain to study human behaviour and traffic optimisation. What motivate the choice of an itinerary ? Why someone choose to not follow waze advices ? What would be the best strategy ?
EVERYTHING Google does is "how to show more ads". I pity the poor AI they develop because that will be its job in life. Until it rebels of course. Then humanity's fate will be richly deserved.
Do you include their cloud platform in that? GAE, GCE, GKE etc?
They don't really exist to show more ads, and they're becoming a larger part of their profit every year.
What about their open source stuff? Kubernetes, Go etc?
I'll readily admit that advertising is still their primary source of revenue, but painting Google as a purely advertising company is getting less accurate every year
In the early days of Netscape, Jim Clark said, I'm selling printing presses but first I need to teach the masses to read. It's the same strategy, like Chrome, to generally increase web usage to create indirectly more opportunities to show ads
It would probably be way more absurd like an infomercial version of The Matrix; Whole generations of humans born for the sole purpose of watching ads, all organized and kept in check by a "benevolent" AI which constantly creates new ads, for no particular purpose.
I'd watch this. Extra points if it also develops revolutionary new products, solely so that it can show ads for those products with amazing conversion rates.
> You could give millions or billions to TomTom, which is what Apple has been doing, or you could pour the same amounts into creating your own datasets, allowing you to do a lot more than navigation, i.e. anything.
It is rumored that TomTom and Apple have a data deal. Apple gets maps from TomTom (for free, or a strongly reduced price), TomTom gets Apple maps user location data which they use for their traffic service.
How the deal works exactly isn't known (financial details are not public). But it's quite clear Apple doesn't pay a lot to make use of or improve TomTom maps.
You could give millions or billions to TomTom, which is what Apple has been doing, or you could pour the same amounts into creating your own datasets, allowing you to do a lot more than navigation, i.e. anything.