[HN Gopher] TomTom to cut 10% of jobs due to improved automation
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TomTom to cut 10% of jobs due to improved automation
Author : araknafobia
Score : 229 points
Date : 2022-06-01 11:10 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.tomtom.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.tomtom.com)
| chzblck wrote:
| I know most people in the states think of them as the old Navi
| company but in europe they are the market leader in telematics
| (tracking driving)
|
| Also up until 2020 they were supplying apple maps with map data.
| rompic wrote:
| TomTom telematics afaik was sold to Bridgestone and is called
| webfleet now.
| noasaservice wrote:
| Damn. And instead of reinvesting and furthering R&D, product
| lines, and more - they're just chopping 10% (or 450 people).
|
| That's a hell of a lot of institutional knowledge just gone.
|
| It also goes to show that when I automate, I should keep it
| hidden. That's because I do not receive the gains of automation.
| Instead, I receive more work or get laid off.
| topaz0 wrote:
| What they should really do is take those productivity gains and
| use them to allow the same number of workers to do less work
| each, for the same pay.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| What productivity gains? The company makes less and less
| money every year. Revenue per employee is trending down, not
| up.
| dswalter wrote:
| It's also an indicator that quality of maps isn't necessarily
| viewed as a differentiator by the TomTom organization. If I
| suddenly had a sufficiently-good automated product and hundreds
| of domain experts, I'd work to have the domain experts refine
| the automated product, hopefully turning my (just pulling
| numbers out of thin air) 97% quality automated solution to a
| 99% quality solution. Those incremental gains on the tail are
| often tremendously valuable for customers.
| myst1 wrote:
| Most company's right now want to automate all skilled labor
| away as quickly as possible. CEOs don't want innovation, they
| want a saleable product with the highest profit margin and the
| least risk. Removing people was always the goal.
|
| I've worked at two jobs were in the first week I was told my
| goal was to automate myself so I could progress my career...
| Yup okay then...
| ben_w wrote:
| I remember hearing much the same words (cf. "My job is to
| make myself redundant") in 2004.
|
| I'm fairly sure this was the goal at least as far back as
| when ship builders switched from high-skilled artisans to
| carve each pulley for the sails individually and by hand, to
| using jigs so that low-skilled carpenters could make a lot
| that were almost as good for a fraction of the price.
| jopsen wrote:
| > when ship builders switched from high-skilled artisans to
| carve each pulley for the sails individually and by hand,
| to using jigs so that low-skilled carpenters could make a
| lot...
|
| Sounds like an interesting story, do you have a link :D
| hef19898 wrote:
| I can recommend the book "Better, faster, cheaper -
| history of manufavturing" which covers this topic among
| basically manufacturing going to the, literally, stone
| age.
| ben_w wrote:
| Sadly not, it was from a TV documentary
| cwilkes wrote:
| Isn't automation an innovation?
| nerdponx wrote:
| It is, but the gains to this innovation are captured almost
| entirely by your employer and not by you. Maybe if you're
| lucky you have a tiny ownership stake in the company, which
| if you are very lucky maybe entitles you to a tiny
| percentage of those gains.
| honkler wrote:
| yup. This is why I never tell anyone that I use Copilot.
| Tarucho wrote:
| What's the difference? You are already training your
| replacement.
| justapassenger wrote:
| This sounds like they're firing people who manually edit and
| fix maps.
|
| While it's job that requires quite a bit of skill (my family
| member used to do that for other companies), those aren't
| people you can redirect to R&D, at least not without heavy
| retraining.
|
| Real reason behind it, is IMO, preparing for recession and
| finding nice sounding reason for layoffs.
| racl101 wrote:
| Yeah, they're probably keeping the people who allow them to
| automate and are laying off the people who, otherwise, need
| to do the work manually / semi-manually when there is no
| automation.
|
| Anytime you automate something that someone is doing
| manually, and you're automating it so well, there's a good
| chance what you build might replace the people doing it.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| It's not clear from the article what the 500 people are doing -
| they could be doing manual data entry or map validation tasks
| which are made redundant by the new "automated mapmaking
| platform" built by others (developers/engineers etc).
|
| The saving from those roles could well be going to be
| reinvested in R&D and product lines.
| alaricus wrote:
| It's probably better to outsource manual map updates to
| OpenStreetMap
| madiator wrote:
| > Regrettably, this will have an intended impact on approximately
| 500 employees in our Maps unit, equivalent to around 10% of our
| total global headcount.
|
| At least they are honest about it.
|
| I am currently reading the first chapter of 21 lessons for the
| 21st century and it fills me up with a bit of dread. People
| having been losing jobs for a long time, but in the future it
| will get harder to get new ones due to the amount of
| specialization you need to acquire.
| wcunning wrote:
| On the other hand, I work in autonomy role at an automaker and
| we have need for a bunch of people in mapping technology, so
| they may be well positioned to move to technician roles in
| related areas. Creative destruction doesn't always have to wipe
| out the value of "old" skills.
| Aperocky wrote:
| > due to the amount of specialization
|
| I see high amount of specialization but only after onboarding
| and not asked of potential candidates.
|
| All we ask are capable software engineers, who we then train to
| be very specialized in what we do.
| davidktr wrote:
| And out of the entire work force, what percentage do you
| consider to be capable software engineers? 5%? 1%?
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > 5%? 1%?
|
| Why would you estimate so low? There are a lot of mediocre
| engineers, myself included, but even they are "capable"
| depending upon what they are tasked to do.
| Aperocky wrote:
| I don't have enough data to come to sweeping generalization
| of a percentage.
|
| But from my own observations, people who are genuinely
| interested usually become capable, anecdotally of course.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I am currently reading the first chapter of 21 lessons for
| the 21st century and it fills me up with a bit of dread. People
| having been losing jobs for a long time, but in the future it
| will get harder to get new ones due to the amount of
| specialization you need to acquire.
|
| In the future, complementary euthanasia will be part of your
| severance package.
| president wrote:
| IMO the trend of loss of jobs to automation or offshoring is
| unsustainable and we are already seeing the cracks forming in
| the fabric of society due to it. Maybe that is why some people
| are trying to "reset" the way the world works.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| WhoWho?
| mtmail wrote:
| Recent presentation about one of their automation tools
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh5fV8TVlSo Like other map
| providers they record where user actually drive and adjust the
| map. Steven Coast (founder of OpenStreetMap) explain how that is
| now sufficient to even start a map from scratch.
| [deleted]
| wjnc wrote:
| TomTom is such an interesting story in technology and finance.
| Went from zero to $ 10B+ between '05 - '07 [1]. Everyone you knew
| had one, used one, loved one. Then the sudden boom in mobile
| phones and mobile internet and the financial crisis. Total crash
| of the stock. Pretty much subsistence without any proper profits
| since '09-'10. Not enough IP to get bought, a few licensing deals
| here and there. Always falling revenue. No profits. Pretty much a
| zombie corporation employing 4500 people.
|
| Perhaps I'm harsh. Reading the annual report [2]. It's a great
| company! High management board remuneration. Great place to work.
| A minister on the supervisory board. Measures CO2 and
| environmental impact and water usage. And still... what does it
| say when 4400 people generate about 2 years of salary in total
| market cap? And where the only positive value is free cash flow
| (non-GAAP).
|
| [1] https://companiesmarketcap.com/tomtom/earnings/
|
| [2] https://corporate.tomtom.com/static-
| files/8fd1d5d2-0ecb-47b6...
| dtech wrote:
| They pretty much lost because free (subsidized) alternatives
| like Google Maps became available, pretty much the same story
| as Netscape. It probably didn't help that their maps were also
| incredibly expensive, EUR100-200 for western Europe in 2005
| money.
| alFReD-NSH wrote:
| Something that most commenters are missing is that TomTom's
| most revenue comes from B2B deals, which are mostly deals
| with automotive companies for car screens experience and also
| providing maps data for products like Bing Maps.
| scarface74 wrote:
| And most consumers would much rather have either CarPlay or
| Android Auto than the crappy software that is made my the
| manufacturers.
| grvdrm wrote:
| Is that true? Not saying you are wrong but is it just an
| anecdote? I anecdotally know lots of people that just use
| their car GPS and don't bother with CarPlay/AA
| [deleted]
| scarface74 wrote:
| 80% of new cars support CarPlay
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/29/apple-carplay-massive-
| succes...
|
| As far as I know, most cars that support CarPlay also
| support Android auto. I can't imagine car manufacturers
| wanting to pay licensing fees to TomTom unnecessarily.
| r-w wrote:
| Which makes you wonder if there must be some good reason
| why they're still doing it.
| Nullabillity wrote:
| Anecdotally, people just use phone holders. I have never
| seen _anyone_ use either the built-in GPS or CarPlay /AA.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| I use my CarPlay for NAV all the time.
| Bud wrote:
| False. People greatly prefer CarPlay if they are iPhone
| users, and already people are refusing to buy any car
| that doesn't support it.
|
| Phone holders are over.
|
| Even as early as 2017, the majority of car buyers already
| wanted CarPlay in a new vehicle and one-quarter of buyers
| said it was a "must have". That was five years ago. I'm
| sure the numbers are much higher now.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/29/apple-carplay-massive-
| succes....
|
| Over 80% of new cars sold now support CarPlay. There's a
| reason for that: customers demanded it and walked out of
| dealerships if they didn't get it.
| Nullabillity wrote:
| Is that a US thing?
| perlgeek wrote:
| ... and yet car makers still feel obliged to provide
| turn-based navigation out of the box.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| But the car manufacturers have a lot more leverage for
| negotiating if they don't really need the software.
| whazor wrote:
| TomTom is actually developing their own distribution of
| Android Auto. Licenced and customized to manufacturers.
| The design concept looked very slick.
| scarface74 wrote:
| What is a "distribution" of Android Auto? Isn't it just a
| remote interface for your phone?
| prepend wrote:
| I like BMW's nav idrive better than the CarPlay
| integration and use it instead of google/apple/wake.
|
| First because it uses the whole screen and heads up
| display and CarPlay doesn't. But this is probably
| something that could be done with better integration.
|
| Second because CarPlay takes over the phone and I want
| nav to keep running while I use the phone for other
| things. I know that I shouldn't, but at stop lights I'll
| read texts, HN, etc. with an active nav, I have to switch
| away from it while I use the phone. With the car running
| the nav, I can use my phone for whatever I like.
|
| All I use Apple Maps for is to send directions to my car.
|
| It's kind of nice to just have a dedicated nav in my car.
| airstrike wrote:
| You read HN at stop lights? How long are those stops???
| scarface74 wrote:
| "I don't want to use CarPlay because if I do, I can't be
| a distracted driver and do things that are illegal in
| many jurisdictions"
| hulitu wrote:
| Android Auto is crap. It only works with Google apps and
| some third party media players, when it starts. I gave up
| on it a long time ago.
| DavidPeiffer wrote:
| This week I've been trying Android Auto out in a rental
| car. I'm not impressed so far. Google Maps has worked
| okay, but Spotify has not. I don't know where the line is
| between Android Auto and the Jeep Cherokee interface, but
| the turn by turn directions are super quiet compared to
| the music with seemingly no way to adjust. Squarely on
| the Jeep UI side, I've been using the car for 4 days and
| still haven't figured out how to turn the radio off but
| keep the screen and turn by turn directions running.
|
| While I haven't tried it, Osmand recently added support
| for Open Street Maps on Android Auto. I'm hopeful the
| experience is decent, but not willing to pay for it at
| the moment.
| wjnc wrote:
| Netscape disbanded as a company in 2003. Why is TomTom still
| here?
|
| I like the questions at the end of a company since a large
| market I work in (insurance / life insurance) is dwindling as
| well. What does that do with companies? How do they
| communicate? What happens when the inevitable shrinking sets
| in and your brain drain is faster than the way you shrink?
| Should you ever actively terminate a company and tranfer IP /
| assets?
| ghshephard wrote:
| Small Nit - Netscape was broken up into pieces and sold to
| Sun Microsystems and AOL in 1999 for $10B. Thank Mike Homer
| for the great timing and resolve to get out while the
| getting was still good.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Selling Netscape's server group to AOL was just sadistic
| punishment.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| For who? Genuinely curious, I didnt even know Netscape
| has a server division. Was it punishment for the team
| working there because it broke their potential, or was it
| that AOL got ripped of because Netscape server tech was
| horrible?
|
| Late 1990s/early 2000s acquisitions just always sound so
| wild to me! Insanely wasteful, or just even bizarre. Tons
| of old/traditional corporations trying to merge/buy their
| way into completely unrelated markets, oe in this case
| cash rich new megacorps like AOL that had immense
| potential just squandering insane amounts of capital with
| almost 0 RoI. Crazy times!
| prepend wrote:
| And just more of AOL being really stupid. It seemed more
| like corporate charity.
| scotty79 wrote:
| > Netscape disbanded as a company in 2003. Why is TomTom
| still here?
|
| Because they are selling raw map data to Google, Bing and
| Apple (maybe?).
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > since a large market I work in (insurance / life
| insurance) is dwindling
|
| Out of curiosity, why is the life insurance market
| dwindling??
| hellisothers wrote:
| Less people with dependents (partners, kids)? Less people
| care or put thought into what happens after they die?
| Also anecdotally many/most peers I talk to about this say
| their company provides life insurance, I then point out
| the difference between this and actual term life
| insurance for when/if they change companies: "oh huh..."
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| Don't forget that life insurance used to come in a
| different form, "whole" life insurance (instead of term
| life insurance) which doubles as a savings/investment
| vehicle. This has changed a _lot_ : people have other
| alternatives that are popular (401(k)s are basically
| everywhere), and life insurance companies are no longer
| able to offer the same kind of terms, especially given
| the ultra-low-interest-rate environment of 2008 to
| present.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| This sounds like pure speculation, which is fine, and I
| appreciate your comment, but would also like to hear from
| the poster who made the original comment since he works
| in that industry.
| wjnc wrote:
| Thanks Ted. In the Netherlands it's a combination of a
| few market trends. 1. A trick insurers pulled in the 90s
| and consumers never forgave us for (lending money in the
| late 90s for leveraged stock investments with massive
| cost loading; still ongoing litigation). 2. Mortgage
| rules changing making a certain type of life insurance
| ineligible for interest deduction (you used to be able to
| pay 5% interest, get that interest as income tax
| deductible thus returning 50+% of that interest and still
| get 5% interest in your deposit!) and 3. the very low
| interest rates making products generally less
| interesting.
|
| Most insurers here have closed their books, with only a
| few products open for sales. A few larger insurers and
| hedge funds are buying portfolios in order to hopefully
| gain benefits of scale. There's basically two ways of
| making money: better investment returns usually via more
| risky investments and cost savings. Since many of these
| products stem from 70s-90s IT modernization and cost
| saving is a real activity.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Most growth in insurance is coming from developing
| countries at this point. They still have rapid economic
| and population growth.
| lozenge wrote:
| Transfer to who? All the people who know how to put the
| assets to good use... are already employed by TomTom.
|
| As long as the company provides value to shareholders and
| customers, why wind it down? Not everything had to be about
| growth, growth, growth.
| wjnc wrote:
| Let me be the first to say that hardcore capitalism isn't
| my usual purview. And that exactly the diversity of
| stakeholders is why I like this question.
|
| TomTom obviously offers no value to shareholders (no
| dividend policy, history of losses, perhaps except those
| searching for volatily). It's 49% owned by the directors
| with a 51% float. It clearly offers some value to
| customers since it has revenues. However, the revenues
| have been falling for a decade and most auto
| manufacturers seem able to procure these materials in-
| house.
|
| It has value to 4500 employees who retain gainful
| employment at TomTom! But the financial metric to measure
| value added for those employees is lacking: TomTom is
| worth nearly nothing. Society would be better of
| 'cancelling' TomTom and letting all employees go to
| companies with higher added value to society. They could
| be teachers, nurses and researchers at companies that
| further the technical boundary. Instead, they are working
| for no value at all except their salaries. It's sad. (:
| Hyperbole.)
| sokoloff wrote:
| > most auto manufacturers seem able to procure these
| materials in-house
|
| Most auto manufacturers go outside for nav/infotainment
| units from suppliers like Here, MVI, Telenav, etc.
|
| I don't see any impenetrable barrier that TomTom couldn't
| try to compete in that market (or as a data supplier to
| that market).
| alFReD-NSH wrote:
| They are in that market actually with major manufactures
| like BMW.
| [deleted]
| usrusr wrote:
| Plenty of people working for negative value except for
| their salaries and whatever wins they provide company
| owners in the negative sum games they engage in.
| alFReD-NSH wrote:
| As long as they have their B2B deals, they are gonna be
| around.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Free mapping existed before Google Maps.
|
| Mapping isn't the hard part or the expensive part, the
| hardware is. Smartphones have GPS and when people started
| getting smartphones, the value of having a separate
| navigation devices went to zero-ish unless it's built in to
| your car or maybe some low power thing for wilderness
| exploration (or having a boat or a plane or that kind of
| thing)
| rickdeckard wrote:
| > Free mapping existed before Google Maps.
|
| Not sure if free mapping really existed as an accessible
| (mobile) product, considering that nearly everyone had to
| buy the mapdata from dedicated companies (Navteq and
| TeleAtlas dominated the market, Navteq was later acquired
| by Nokia, TeleAtlas by TomTom)
|
| In any case, free NAVIGATION didn't exist until Google Maps
| came along, completely disrupting the whole industry of
| "casual" Navigation solutions. Hardware wasn't even the
| issue, companies worked out profitable compact hardware
| solutions, introduced different tiers from Entry to Premium
| and in parallel TomTom (and Wayfinder et al) started to
| offer Navigation as a subscription service directly and as
| white-label via mobile carriers, with applications for
| J2ME, Windows PPC, Series60 (Nokia, Samsung,..), Symbian
| UIQ (Sony, Motorola). They had a robust offering, quality
| maps and plenty of added datasets like POI, speed-
| information, radar-warning,... (anyone remembers the
| celebrity voice packages?)
|
| Then Google opened Navigation as public beta, grabbed a
| huge chunk of this market and later added offline maps to
| grab another chunk of it (for navigation in international
| roaming). The quality was far below any competitor, but it
| was free and for occasional use totally sufficient...
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Yeah: Microsoft Maps on PocketPC. Pffffft!
| prepend wrote:
| > Free mapping existed before Google Maps.
|
| Search existed before Google as well. Free maps were very
| inferior to Google maps and also were a loss leader for
| other service that's MapQuest was trying to sell into
| enterprise and stuff.
|
| Google maps was just another ad stream for Google and so
| was much easier to link to, embed everywhere. And had an
| innovative UI.
|
| Before Google cranked up their prices Google maps got
| embedded everywhere. This was novel and not something that
| Mapquest and other existing maps promoted.
| belter wrote:
| As the owner of several TomTom devices, who tried a smartphone
| and google maps as an alternative, my experience is that the
| maps are of higher quality and the navigation recommendations
| better.
|
| Multiple times, when in a Taxi in a foreign country, that used
| the usual solution of smartphone and Google maps, managed to
| get on time and find a tricky destination by popping up my
| trusted TomTom.
| asddubs wrote:
| yup, I still use one too. it's great, way better than google
| maps. But I'm guessing it's a hard pitch to get people to
| even try a dedicated device for something they already have
| in their pocket, for free.
| andsoitis wrote:
| "the best camera is the one that's with you" - Chase Jarvis
| hulitu wrote:
| Until you use it and then realise that the picture you
| took with it is unusable.
| hef19898 wrote:
| The free TomTom android app is great! Cannot recommend
| enough.
| gadders wrote:
| I won't buy another TomTom device, but I pay the ~PS20/yearly
| fee for the mobile phone version because the maps are so much
| better than Google Maps and don't need an always-on data
| connection.
| daniel_iversen wrote:
| I really liked how TomTom's voice navigation was a lot more
| "vocal"/directive than Google, and for me that was a real
| benefit (maybe its niche, but they were at least
| differentiated there) but then some years ago (when they
| changed to a subscription service AFAIR) they changed the
| software and it was no longer "easier" to navigate with than
| Google (who had lots of other benefits incl. being free).
| Wonder if they have some sort of niche benefits as a
| navigation device now? Offline maps was good but Google's had
| that for a long time too.. Also, isn't Google and Apple Maps
| location tracking much more accurate in cities than TomTom
| devices because they don't just use GPS but also use cell
| tower triangulation as well as nearby wifi hotspot detection?
| And do people know (from their annual report) how much
| revenue comes from devices vs. licensing maps? (I'm sure
| device sales are close to non-existent compared to licensing
| deals)
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > they don't just use GPS but also use cell tower
| triangulation as well as nearby wifi hotspot detection?
|
| Presumably the TomTom phone apps do the same. Yes, they
| have phone apps not just stand alone devices.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Guess it depends on the location? We used it to drive through
| rural Canada and if we had followed any of the many wrong
| ways it tried to send us, we would be very dead.
| fumeux_fume wrote:
| I have TomTom as the built in nav for my car (2021 model).
| It's awful compared to Google maps and we live in a highly
| urbanized area so maybe it's just bad in general. Seeing
| the company's continual decline comports with my experience
| with their main product.
| snarf21 wrote:
| Navigation is all about the _DATA_. If it worked better (or
| worse) in a certain location, it is solely because they have
| access to quality data. Quality data costs a lot. Companies
| like NavTech used to literally drive cars down the road
| (think Google street view cards) and capturing everything
| (speed limit, number of lanes, boundaries, etc.) but they
| were bought by Nokia a long time ago. Not sure what is what
| these days. You can get pretty good data these days by
| leveraging free government data and things like
| OpenStreetMap. Routing is quite simple with good data. The
| harder part is conversion to narrative directions. How many
| times have you been given instructions to "continue to stay
| on XX for 500 feet" only to be told to "stay straight to
| continue on XX"? (Source: Worked for MapQuest for many years)
| maxerickson wrote:
| Nokia's map group spun out into Here, which is owned by a
| group of EU automakers.
| drno123 wrote:
| The main competitor to NavTech was TeleAtlas, that was
| acquired by TomTom.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > is that the maps are of higher quality and the navigation
| recommendations better.
|
| to be clear here, for all readers.. you mean _TomTom_ maps
| are higher quality? in what region? rural, urban or ? thx
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I worked at TomTom in Amsterdam from 2007-2009, and had a fun
| time and learned a lot working with some smart people at a
| great company that treated us well and had good leadership.
|
| But TomTom was just on the cusp of a small company turning into
| a big company.
|
| And the savings and loan crisis was about to cause the economy
| to collapse.
|
| Then TomTom got into a bidding war with Garmin over Tele Atlas.
|
| So they ended up borrowing a whole lot of money at a really bad
| time.
|
| Just as the iPhone was hitting the market, and Google and Apple
| were rolling out free maps and turn-by-turn navigation on smart
| phones that everybody already had.
|
| I wrote about that earlier in the discussion about Etak:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13747015
|
| DonHopkins on Feb 27, 2017 | parent | context | favorite | on:
| Who Needs GPS? The Story of Etak's 1985 Car Naviga...
|
| "Etak eventually became a part of TomTom, ensuring that its map
| data, some of which was first digitized back during the
| Navigator's development in 1984, would live on to this day."
|
| The story of how TomTom and not Garmin ended up owning the data
| originally digitized at Etak is interesting. At the time, there
| were only two digital map companies: Tele Atlas (from which
| TomTom got their map data) and Navteq (from which Garmin got
| their map data).
|
| From Wikipedia [1]:
|
| "On July 23, 2007, a EUR2 billion offer for the company by
| navigation system maker TomTom was accepted by the Tele Atlas
| board. This was then trumped by a EUR2.3 billion offer from
| United States-based rival Garmin on October 31, 2007 initiating
| a bidding war for Tele Atlas. TomTom responded by upping their
| bid to EUR2.9 billion, an offer which was again approved by the
| board of Tele Atlas. Garmin had been expected to counterbid
| once again: with Tele Atlas' main global rival Navteq subject
| to a takeover bid from Nokia, the company had stated that it
| did not wish both companies to fall into the hands of rivals.
| However, after striking a content agreement with Navteq through
| the year 2015, Garmin withdrew its takeover offer, clearing the
| way for TomTom. On December 4, 2007, TomTom shareholders
| approved the takeover. The European Commissioner for
| Competition cleared the takeover in May 2008, and it closed in
| June."
|
| TomTom (where I worked at the time) was shocked and dismayed
| that Garmin outbid them by EUR300 million on Tele Atlas,
| because while it made a lot of sense for TomTom to buy their
| own map data supplier, it would have been prohibitively complex
| and expensive for Garmin, who used Navteq data, to switch map
| data sources and retool their entire map data digestion,
| distribution and error correction pipelines.
|
| TomTom was so determined to buy Tele Atlas and keep it out of
| Garmin's hands, that they raised their bid by EUR900 million.
|
| In the meantime, Garmin renegotiated their deal with Navteq, so
| they didn't have to pay as much for the data, and didn't have
| to switch map suppliers.
|
| The stunt that Garmin pulled off was, in my opinion, an
| ingenious head-fake that cost TomTom an enormous amount of
| money, almost a billion euros, and at the same time saved
| Garmin a whole lot of money by enabling them to renegotiate a
| better deal with Navteq, who was faced with losing their major
| customer if they didn't lower their prices.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tele_Atlas
| Havoc wrote:
| Yeah does seem like they're in a market where the problem is
| solved & there is no next harder step to progress to
| cerol wrote:
| As a marathon runner, I know TomTom mainly for its sports
| watches. But I feel they've been fading away slowly. Garmin is
| still the champion in that area, but both must be taking a hit
| with all the cheap chinese knock offs. At the end of the day,
| you don't even need a high end sports watch unless you're a
| high end athlete. Reliable location tracking and good battery
| life is all you need, every other information can be derived
| thereof (avg speed, pace and distance). Only if you're into
| extreme activities you'll need something like a high end TomTom
| or Garmin (like 35+ km run in a hot day, or an Iron Man).
| zelos wrote:
| > But I feel they've been fading away slowly.
|
| TomTom closed their sports division and made most of the
| staff redundant.
| cerol wrote:
| That explains it. I recently had to download their activity
| upload app, but it was nowhere to be found on their
| website. Eventually I found a binary somewhere on the
| internet and it worked, and their upload infrastructure is
| still running it seems. As long as I can get the activities
| from my 8 year old TomTom Runner to my Strava account, I'm
| good.
| nradov wrote:
| Garmin is vulnerable to disruption by cheap Chinese
| competitors at the low end of the market. They're now trying
| to move beyond selling individual devices to build an
| ecosystem with multiple types of devices connected to online
| services. And their latest devices are starting to provide
| something like a little AI fitness coach on your wrist, which
| is valuable even to ordinary people not into extreme
| activities. So far the execution is a little clumsy and buggy
| but the potential is huge.
| m463 wrote:
| I've wondered if garmin is vulnerable to the apple watch.
|
| That said, I love my garmin watch - it's and offline device
| that is useful without selling all your data.
| reidjs wrote:
| There is a luxury market among social athletes for these
| watches. Rolex for runners/bikers.
| bradwood wrote:
| The blockbuster/Kodak moment is coming. Even if they try to
| pivot, it's a very long shot for them to get over it.
|
| Strong short on TOM2
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| What's a typical ratio of total salary to market cap? I don't
| have a reference of if 2x is good or not.
| kawsper wrote:
| They did try moving to mobiles, I used to have TomTom Navigator
| on my Symbian phone (Nokia N73), it worked quite well back
| then!
|
| But you needed a seperate bluetooth GPS device because my phone
| didn't include a GPS-receiver.
| kalleboo wrote:
| Heck I own the TomTom Australia iPhone app, which I bought
| when visiting my parents who live out of mobile reception
| range. The maps were already much more accurate than Google
| when it came to rural tracks.
| minhazm wrote:
| I had an iPhone 3G without a data plan and TomTom was one of
| the only companies that offered a navigation application that
| worked completely offline. If I recall correctly TomTom also
| provided the maps data for Apple Maps initially and perhaps
| still does to some degree.
| uticus wrote:
| On iOS 14, in Maps app, the info section shows TomTom pretty
| obviously at the bottom
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| Wow an unbroken 13 year stretch of ever decreasing revenue:
|
| https://companiesmarketcap.com/tomtom/revenue/
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| I'd hate to be the one left holding that bag.
|
| https://companiesmarketcap.com/tomtom/marketcap/
| donthellbanme wrote:
| fbn79 wrote:
| Using TomTom web map API for a project and they are really well
| developed. Great product that can compete with Google Maps.
| alaricus wrote:
| I think Apple Maps is basically TomTom with a Apple logo
| slapped to it.
| groovybits wrote:
| "The main provider of map data is TomTom, but data is also
| supplied by Automotive Navigation Data, Getchee, Hexagon AB,
| IGN, Increment P, Intermap Technologies, LeadDog, MDA
| Information Systems, OpenStreetMap, and Waze."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Maps#Features
| djvdq wrote:
| I'm slightly surprised by Waze. I did not expect Google to
| support the competition
| samyok wrote:
| They stopped using TomTom in the US in 2020:
| https://www.wired.com/story/apple-maps-redesign/
| glintik wrote:
| My thoughts: Any middle or large company can fire off at least
| 20% without any negative impact to earnings.
| e_i_pi_2 wrote:
| Sad to keep seeing automation get better and the headline not to
| be "TomTom increases paid time off due to improved automation"
| scotty79 wrote:
| That's not how capitalism works.
|
| Besides TomTom is a Dutch company so the conditions there are
| already pretty awesome.
| StillBored wrote:
| I just saw a car with their logo and a couple roof mounted
| cameras driving around in my area last week.
|
| Apparently doing a streetview kind of thing.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| It's not necessarily for a street view style product, they
| could just be gathering ground truth data for more accurate
| maps.
|
| (I've always been surprised that Tesla didn't leverage their
| fleet of cars covered in cameras to build a maps product.)
| tealpod wrote:
| I worked for TomTom ~12 years ago, they had some of the best dev
| from all over the world. The one issue I found was they had all
| indpendent teams which are bit disconnected and not sure what
| everyone were doing in total.
| frenchman99 wrote:
| > Regrettably, this will have an intended impact
|
| This reads weird to me (non-native English speaker). How can you
| regrettably reach your intended impact? Is that some kind of an
| idiom?
| stkdump wrote:
| Non-native speaker myself, I had to do a double take as well. I
| think 'to regret sth' can have two slightly different meanings:
|
| 1. If I could reverse time, I would decide differently getting
| a different outcome.
|
| 2. I am sad that this happens, but it is still the preferable
| outcome, compared to the alternative.
|
| I think I 'default' to the first meaning. But in this case the
| second is probably more fitting.
| pantulis wrote:
| I think they are threading a fine line here. They regret that
| they had to make these plans. Or, note to investors: we are
| firing people but it was expected.
| laputan_machine wrote:
| I'm a native speaker and it is paradoxical to me, too.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| From what I've seen of recent products, they should probably
| close up shop and just license patents and collect dues. Dead
| company.
| fatboy wrote:
| Are announcements like this always done in this strange mixed-
| voice style? The first para reads like it's a third party that's
| reporting on the event, then in the third para they use the word
| "our", and it's on their website of course.
| polynomial wrote:
| At my first job I found it exceptionally odd that the CEO (who
| was charged with properly running the company, obvi) would
| phrase his quarterly reports to the board as if he was just an
| outside auditor, eg. "you're going to have a problem here"
| "you're won't have revenue to cover expenses" "your company is
| not running well"
|
| As if to deny any responsibility for how the company was being
| run.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Sounds like he was trying to deny ultimate (as opposed to
| any) responsibility, which seems fair enough given that the
| board was his boss and had the power to fire him
| pionar wrote:
| Usually, yes. It's because "reporters" will copy-paste the
| press release and put it in a "story" about it that's just a
| parroting of the release.
| hvjackson wrote:
| Maybe this is just my consumer perspective but I feel like TomTom
| really missed on a pivot to other GPS-related products that
| Garmin has successfully nailed. 10-15 years ago both companies
| were known mainly for car sat-nav systems but Garmin now has an
| incredibly diverse product line with well-liked fitness watches,
| bike computers, exploring/off-grid satellite communicators,
| marine charts, aviation, etc. Whereas TomTom seems stuck still
| selling the same handful of automobile satnav products which are
| surely squeezed to a tiny consume base between smartphone apps
| and feature-rich car screens.
|
| I know there is map IP as well and maybe that's their only real
| business opportunity going forward.
| abraae wrote:
| Garmin seems to be nailing it. I've recently got more into golf
| & snorkeling and Garmin have attractive devices for both those
| random activities that I could definitely see buying at some
| stage.
| jlg23 wrote:
| I bought my first Garmin device more than 20 years ago and
| already back then they were the go-to source for consumer
| handheld GPS location/mapping devices.
| alaricus wrote:
| TomTom is mostly a B2B company now. Their main customers are
| other companies like Apple. I doubt they make a lot of money
| from consumer devices.
| normie3000 wrote:
| Wasn't Garmin already an established company with other GPS-
| based product lines before they got into car satnav?
| colechristensen wrote:
| Garmin makes commercial, aviation, defense, etc. kinds of GPS
| systems and was producing systems.
|
| This was their first product, http://retro-
| gps.info/Garmin/Pronav-GPS-100/index.html and their first
| customer was the US Army. It replaced Army GPS systems which
| weighed nearly 40 pounds.
| nixass wrote:
| Correct, they are also in avionics business which gives them
| nice revenue too.
| afterburner wrote:
| Ah, the secret to "success" in all things: already having
| piles of money.
| nradov wrote:
| TomTom also tried to sell GPS fitness tracker watches but they
| weren't any better than competing products from Garmin, Suunto,
| and others.
| chrisfosterelli wrote:
| Tomtom did try to enter this market with a series of GPS
| watches [0] some years back but the garmin watches were better
| in nearly every way and dominated the market quite quickly.
|
| [0]: https://www.amazon.ca/TomTom-Runner-GPS-Watch-
| Black/dp/B00IK...
| alFReD-NSH wrote:
| Actually TomTom has deal with few car manufacturers to provide
| those feature-rich screens.
| jrockway wrote:
| I think you're right. Garmin has other big-ticket lines of
| business (Marine, Aviation) but "Fitness" is where they're
| making most of their money:
| https://www8.garmin.com/aboutGarmin/invRelations/reports/202...
|
| "Auto" is notably sitting in last place.
|
| I'm surprised that you can make more money from bike
| accessories than from aircraft avionics, but I guess everyone
| needs a bike accessory and nobody really NEEDS a G1000. Plus,
| no FAA to send paperwork to when you want to make a new bike
| pedal.
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| >I'm surprised that you can make more money from bike
| accessories than from aircraft avionics
|
| Maybe if you're Garmin, and make very little aircraft
| avionics. They've never made much on it, since they only make
| a tiny piece of what aircraft use.
|
| Boeing, Airbus, Lockheed Martin, GE (still in the game?) make
| enough on aircraft avionics to buy Garmin many times over.
| Garmin never made it into the space of high end aircraft
| positioning systems.
| jpgvm wrote:
| Flew yesterday in a Cessna 172 with G1000 glass cockpit for
| the first time. It's a pretty sweet product so hopefully
| they find more success in avionics.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| That might change. They've launched a new autonomous
| landing system and seems like more is coming
|
| https://discover.garmin.com/en-US/autonomi/
| rsimmons wrote:
| I thought TomTom was just another Kodak, Blockbuster, or RIM.
| Didn't realise they were still trying to make things, surely
| Google and Apple own the car market now?
| glook wrote:
| Wouldn't it be cool if everyone kept their jobs but only had to
| work 90% of the time?
| scotty79 wrote:
| I used to work for TomTom maybe 10 years ago.
|
| I was there when Google started offering turn by turn navigation
| for free. Other issue was live traffic information. As you might
| imagine all this caused some concern among employees because that
| was, I think, the main source of revenue for the company.
|
| They were already doing some other stuff like fitness wearables
| but they didn't seem to be leaning into it.
|
| Main idea for staying in business, since you can't compete with
| free, was to go deeper into cooperation with car manufacturers to
| provide builtin navigation in cars. They were already doing it
| back then, I think, but they've seen their salvation in capturing
| bigger part of that market.
|
| I was a software developer there, employed in projects pretty far
| from their core business, but I learned there a lot about how
| companies become corporations why they can and do run like a
| headless chicken, spilling money left and right. It's basically
| about survival. Company becomes a corporation when it randomly
| discovers a gold vein in the economy. For TomTom this gold vein
| was maps on portable computers. This gold vein brings in
| absolutely insane amount of money. Then this money needs to be
| spent on doing a lot of unrelated inefficient discovery work
| wasting huge amount of money so they have a chance of finding
| next gold vein before shifting sands of economy and human
| development burry the original one.
|
| From what I see shared in this thread, TomTom still haven't found
| their second gold vein.
|
| Maybe I should get hired there again. A lot of my friends from
| other jobs work there now. I never seen from the inside how
| corporations die.
| jollybean wrote:
| I think this is a naive take, the glib view of a worker with no
| practical insight into company operations and decision making.
|
| It's doubtful that TomTom's foray into mobile was 'accidental'
| and it's also hard to understand how much money is being spent,
| and the risks involved in finding other revenue streams.
|
| When mega corps come in and suddenly make a major part of your
| business unworkable, yes, companies go into reactionary mode.
| That's normal.
| scotty79 wrote:
| > It's doubtful that TomTom's foray into mobile was
| 'accidental'
|
| They started as a small company writing random software for
| palmtops. Until one day they made mapping software. They
| didn't expect it will be that popular with people. It was
| popular to a degree that people were buying palmtops just to
| use their app and didn't care about all other software their
| new palmtop could have.
|
| It's as if today, small software shop released an app that
| bumps iPhone device sales by +20% just because people want to
| use that one app event though they don't care about all other
| things iPhone can do. Everybody can dream of that, but nobody
| can plan for that. It was purely accidental.
|
| > When mega corps come in and suddenly make a major part of
| your business unworkable, yes, companies go into reactionary
| mode. That's normal.
|
| What I describe as running like a headless chicken started
| many years before I came to TomTom. I've seen tonnes of
| internal wiki's that were once created for internal random,
| ultimately abandoned projects. I even seen two projects
| attempting the same thing, new one didn't have an idea that
| somebody, some time ago in that same corporation already
| tried to build that.
|
| It's standard mode of operation. In corporation you have core
| business that's kept tight and professional and huge amount
| of side activity that's just bleeding money trying to
| discover next big pivot.
| tdfx wrote:
| If it makes you feel better, Google doesn't have a second gold
| vein yet, either.
| asdff wrote:
| Don't they have like a dozen ore veins?
| alaricus wrote:
| Google is fk'ed if wide-scale ad blocking really picks up.
| For example ISP-level adblocking.
| wonderbore wrote:
| Of course they're not. It just might get more complicated
| for users but it'd be super easy for them to set up
| cloaking. uBlock could deal with that, ISP won't.
|
| Either way that will never happen obviously; Why would an
| ISP "block ads"? They're literally hosting Google hardware
| (specifically YouTube's cache)
| chiefstorm wrote:
| In France, Free (one of the major telcos) has done
| exactly that. They block ads from the router that they
| give to their subscribers.
|
| I guess they may be doing that to save bandwidth... They
| also have a tendency to offer features that few of their
| subscribers use, or even know about (some of their
| routers come with built-in VPN servers and torrent
| seedboxes).
|
| In French:
| https://www.universfreebox.com/article/19260/Comment-
| fonctio...
| bradwood wrote:
| If they do this wholesale, they should probably block
| this at their BGP routers.
| alaricus wrote:
| I've seen this implemented in hilarious ways:
| https://www.cnet.com/culture/how-pakistan-knocked-
| youtube-of...
| alaricus wrote:
| I can see ad-blocking as a feature an ISP can try to
| sell. Imagine an ISP-level PiHole. (I can see this
| selling easily given how many family and friends asked me
| to install PiHole for them.
| alaricus wrote:
| > Why would an ISP "block ads"?
|
| "Pay 5 euros per month for the ad-blocker privacy
| feature!"
|
| They could probably make a lot of money from this.
| acchow wrote:
| > For example ISP-level adblocking.
|
| Google could circumvent this if ISPs tried this.
|
| How would an ISP block ads coming in encrypted as normal
| content?
| alaricus wrote:
| The same way as PiHole does. It's not hard to block
| Google adds on 3rd party sites with a DNS or IP-level
| block.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| They'll just add DoH to Chrome.
| acchow wrote:
| If ISPs actually tried to do this en-masse, Google would
| move all ad serving to google.com
| alaricus wrote:
| This is basically what youtube is doing. PiHole does not
| work on Youtube, but uBlock origin does (so does NewPipe,
| FreeTube and a bunch of software).
|
| This would solve Google's immediate problem, but it's
| such a huge escalation that I expect lots of unintended
| effects not to Google's benefit. There is a reason they
| haven't done this, despite widespread adblocking use.
| ratww wrote:
| Yeah, the industry is definitely moving to that. Admiral,
| probably the most known ad-blocker-blocker already
| successfully circumvents PiHole and other DNS blocking by
| being served by the same domain.
|
| I also expect Google to double down on Chrome Manifest v3
| limitations if ad-blocking keeps getting more popular. Or
| even using DNS-over-HTTPS as a default on Chrome if ISP
| blocking ever becomes a thing.
| alaricus wrote:
| Do you have pointers on what Admiral is doing? I just
| remember they tried to get their domains removed from
| blocklists via DMCA.
| ratww wrote:
| For most customers, it seems they just went and bought
| about 2 thousand randomly-named domains and serve third-
| party scripts. However I've seen a couple places where
| Admiral was not blocked, because it was being served from
| a subdomain. I wish I had written down where it was to
| add to the EasyList or something. :(
| alaricus wrote:
| https://github.com/jkrejcha/AdmiraList/blob/master/Admira
| Lis...
| ratww wrote:
| That's a good list.
|
| This one seems more up to date, apparently the owner is
| scraping from somewhere:
| https://github.com/dotspencer/block-admiral
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The reason why Google (and other advertisers) do not do
| this is actually not because of the ad blocker arms race.
| On-domain ads _are_ difficult to block, as can be seen by
| Facebook. But it also has huge trust problems, as can be
| seen by... Facebook.
|
| Right now, with normal web advertising, the publisher
| (person with a website who wants to sell ads) tells your
| browser to go get an ad from the advertiser (the person
| paying for the ads), and that means that the advertiser
| gets a web request every time their ad is sold. This
| means that they can implement their own analytics and do
| not have to trust the publisher's, because the publisher
| merely kicks off the ad delivery process.
|
| However, this requires separate domains or IP addresses,
| which can be blocked even at the network level[0] with a
| Pi-Hole. The alternative would be to serve ads straight
| off the publisher's site, which is how most social
| networks do it. Except... now you've just cut off every
| advertiser's data spigot[1]. If you do that, web
| advertising stops working - not because it's harder to
| target users, but because it's impossible to verify that
| you are paying for legitimate traffic to your website.
|
| This is not a hypothetical. Social media companies
| already implement publisher delivery, and there have been
| multiple times in which they[2] themselves have admitted
| that their analytics and attribution were just plain
| wrong. That meant that advertisers were paying for
| traffic they never actually got. Publishers have an
| inherent incentive to inflate their traffic; the ad
| networks call this "click fraud" and it's when you run a
| bunch of bots to click on ads so you make more money[3].
|
| The end of separate-domain advertising takes us right
| back to the days of television, where advertisers were
| buying specific time slots ("inventory") from specific
| publishers they trusted. The way that said inventory was
| priced was through random sampling of television
| watchers; but that relied on asking people to accurately
| record their TV watching habits. Good luck doing that
| when ads are served on a request-by-request basis.
|
| Yes, you _could_ randomly sample web users by having them
| install an extension that scans all their traffic and
| generates an equivalent log, but that almost certainly
| violates every extension repository 's rules. Remember
| how Facebook was caught using their In-House signing cert
| to ship an iPhone VPN that did just that? That's the sort
| of sketchy shit we're talking about here. And any rules
| for detecting and reporting which ads were viewed could
| also be extracted and used to generate a tool for
| _blocking_ said ads, which would be counter-productive.
|
| So, basically, the reason why we don't just have
| publishers delivering ads is because it shuts out smaller
| publishers from selling them and puts advertisers solely
| at the mercy of Google and Facebook to verify that they
| actually got what they paid for. It would be a
| monopolistic power play few would tolerate.
|
| [0] DoH and encrypted SNI complicates things, since it
| was also intended to be censorship-resistant - and we're
| trying to censor advertisements. However, you cannot
| encrypt IP addresses without taking on all of the
| inefficiencies of Tor onion routing. And you can also
| configure your web browser to just use the Pi-Hole's DNS
| instead of a public DoH server.
|
| [1] Yes, there is an argument that telling the user's
| browser to make a request to another server is not
| "sending data"; this argument is stupid.
|
| [2] Minimally, Facebook and Twitter; though other socials
| probably have the same problem.
|
| [3] This is also why Google's antispam teams are secret
| police
| babypuncher wrote:
| If advertisers felt motivated enough, circumventing
| PiHole would be trivial. Since all they do is block DNS
| requests based on a blacklist, an ad company just needs
| to serve their content from a trusted domain. Google owns
| plenty of domains which few PiHole users are likely to
| tolerate being blacklisted. They already do this with ads
| on YouTube.
| alaricus wrote:
| Youtube ads are not a problem because of uBlock Origin /
| Newpipe etc... I have not seen an ad in Youtube in more
| than a decade.
|
| But you are right. This could motivate them to move to a
| single domain for all Google content. But this is just
| another escalation in the adblock arms range. uBlock-
| style blockers would proliferate.
| random314 wrote:
| Isn't the phrase gold mine?
| sp332 wrote:
| A vein of gold is an incredibly pure area of ore. Sometimes
| you can basically pick chucks of gold up off the ground.
| https://www.livescience.com/bonanza-gold-vein-
| nanoparticles....
| amelius wrote:
| You can't accidentally hit a gold mine like you can a gold
| vein.
| Integrape wrote:
| You build the mine after finding the vein.
| metacritic12 wrote:
| But they (chose / lucked into) a gold vein that's huge and
| growing.
|
| And played no small role in shaping the ecology (Android to
| keep abreast of mobile, Pixel to reduce hardware monopoly) to
| ensure that gold vein grew.
| agloeregrets wrote:
| Google bought their other Gold.
|
| Youtube, Android, Google Search on iOS, ChromeOS. All of it
| is a moat to protect the first.
| sp332 wrote:
| YouTube doesn't make a lot of money. Android might if you
| include the Play store.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| A run-rate of $30B/yr is "not a lot of money"?
| [deleted]
| Iwan-Zotow wrote:
| and how much are profits?
| sbrother wrote:
| > YouTube doesn't make a lot of money.
|
| Citation needed... Is $7B/quarter not a lot of money?
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| That's revenue, not profit. I don't have profit numbers
| but I've heard that YouTube is extremely expensive to
| run.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Google doesn't release net income numbers by business
| unit but in 2021 revenue for search was around $148B and
| Youtube revenue was around $29B. Given that youtube
| revenue dollars are probably much more expensive than
| search revenue dollars I'd say that ratio will skew
| toward _more_ of the profit being in the search category
| than the you tube category, not less. It does seem on
| balance to be a relatively small part of their business
| dollars-wise, although I 'd make the case that the
| cultural relevancy that youtube gives google has a non-
| zero value.
| amelius wrote:
| If the gold vein is advertising, then there is no other
| gold vein for Google.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| GCP loses money? (edit: I see a comment landed elsewhere
| that they lose money, and might get shutdown)
| coding123 wrote:
| I would say it's the people visiting google that's the
| gold vein - advertising is the pick-axe. You don't make
| money with ads if no one visits. So in a sense making
| more and more products and reasons to visit is the gold
| vein.
|
| Otherwise just saying advertising is a gold vein would
| mean people that put up a blank page with a single ad on
| it and no reason to visit would definitely not be a gold
| vein. So as others mentioned, its the Youtube and Gmails
| level products.
| perlgeek wrote:
| What about cloud?
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| Hasn't Google said if they don't "win" Cloud against AWS
| and/or Azure, they're going to shut GCP down eventually?
| ceras wrote:
| IIRC the rumor leak around that was more nuanced: the
| leaks reported someone allegedly saying that market
| economics may not ultimately be able to support more than
| 2 leaders, because the economics will make #1 and #2 able
| to profit at prices that numbers 3+ can't compete with
| due to lack of scale. So the statement was that GCP has
| keep up or its ability to profit will be at risk, not
| that they'd shut down just because their slice of the pie
| isn't big enough if they end up as #3.
|
| I don't believe it was clear who said this, how confident
| it was that someone said this, and whether it was an off-
| the-cuff comment in support of a push for more growth or
| an actual deep assessment of the economics of the space.
| kube-system wrote:
| GCP loses money. They just reported their best quarter for
| cloud earnings. Negative 931 million dollars in Q1 2022.
| nix9000 wrote:
| The numbers are trending in the right direction. From
| 2021Q1 to 2022Q1, revenue grew 43% (vs 34% at AWS and 46%
| at Azure), loss went down by 4%, and the loss to revenue
| ratio went from 24% to 16%.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| I'm always a little confused by this claim. Focusing on
| revenue-generating products and not the user products they
| use to sell them: Google Search was their first success, then
| AdSense (third-party display ads), then YouTube. The latter
| two each make almost $30B/yr (run rate). Ignoring ads, Google
| Cloud makes >$20B/yr, as do Google hardware sales, with an
| additional $30B/yr from "non-advertising Other".
|
| I don't really understand how one supports this claim without
| using decidedly non-standard definitions and grouping of
| revenue. If you insist on lumping together separate, wildly-
| successful revenue-generating products into overbroad groups
| by the manner in which the revenue is collected, and ignore a
| couple of objectively enormous revenue streams: Do you
| similarly feel that Apple "hasn't found a second gold vein"
| beyond "hardware sales"?
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Interesting that going deeper integrated into cars was their
| game plan. I've never used our in-car GPS (other than playing
| with it once). If it was any good it has a ton of advantages
| over using Google, including display on the "speedometer"
| screen.
|
| Sadly, it's pants. It comically announces caution stationary
| traffic on the M25, generally after we've been stationary for 5
| minutes. The navigation directions aren't as good and Google is
| just so much better at door to door directions to a named
| destination. Others will get you close to your destination and
| you have to work it out. Google will, more often than not, take
| you to the correct carpark.
|
| With Android Auto displaying on the dash it's not even a
| competition.
| scotty79 wrote:
| > I've never used our in-car GPS (other than playing with it
| once).
|
| You bought it. That's enough for them.
| pkulak wrote:
| I'm the total opposite. I love my in-car nav. I have a
| shortcut on the steering wheel that brings up a list of
| recent destinations, so starting it takes literally seconds.
| I don't have to plug in my phone, or even look at it. I get
| turn by turn in the binnacle AND the heads-up display. And on
| top of that, it _doesn't_ do all the silly stuff that Google
| does to make people think it's so great, like routing me
| through some residential neighborhood to save 45 seconds. I'm
| okay taking one freeway vs another, maybe (I don't like
| adding miles to my trip), but that's about as smart as I want
| my navigation to be.
|
| Maybe this is because I don't commute by car though. If I get
| stuck in traffic, it's the one time that month, and I've
| probably got a podcast on anyway.
| kodah wrote:
| I was traveling with some friends through Los Gatos on the
| way to Monterrey and Google had me sit in a residential
| neighborhood traffic jam for over 45 minutes when I
| could've turned left and gotten to my destination much
| quicker. I did end up turning left, but the takeaway that I
| had is that Google isn't always doing the "right" thing.
| nradov wrote:
| There is a particular problem in Los Gatos on summer
| weekends when everyone wants to escape the Bay Area and
| go to the beaches around Santa Cruz. Southbound Highway
| 17 comes to standstill due to idiot timid drivers who
| slow down going uphill and constantly brake around
| curves. Then the navigation apps route drivers onto
| residential streets to try and save a few minutes. It
| gets so bad that local residents are literally trapped
| and even emergency vehicles can't get through.
|
| https://www.losgatosca.gov/2488/Beach-Traffic
| bradwood wrote:
| > ... constantly breaking around curves.
|
| What a drag.
| pkulak wrote:
| Yeah, what a bunch of assholes.
| pishpash wrote:
| It became a 45 minute traffic jam because Google directed
| everyone there. Maybe.
| dmitriid wrote:
| Anecdotally, Waze is (or at least was) better. It would
| try and redirect traffic to avoid too much congestion. So
| it would send you over the highway and me over smaller
| roads in a roundabout way, if possible.
|
| Mind you, I've never seen this properly confirmed :)
| kube-system wrote:
| > I don't have to plug in my phone, or even look at it. I
| get turn by turn in the binnacle AND the heads-up display.
| And on top of that, it _doesn't_ do all the silly stuff
| that Google does to make people think it's so great, like
| routing me through some residential neighborhood to save 45
| seconds.
|
| Apple CarPlay + Apple Maps checks all of those boxes in my
| car.
| pkulak wrote:
| I don't get it. You don't have to look at your phone and
| you get turn-by-turn in your HUD by using Apple Maps?
| kube-system wrote:
| Correct. Many new vehicles integrate the CarPlay APIs
| into the vehicle quite well. And it has wireless carplay,
| so I don't even take the phone out of my pocket. It just
| auto-connects when I start the car. I press the voice
| command button on my steering wheel, tell Siri to
| navigate somewhere, and all of the navigation displays
| (hud/cluster/infotainment display) in my car display the
| directions that Apple Maps is spitting out. It works
| identically to the way a factory nav would otherwise
| work.
| nradov wrote:
| With Android Auto I can save time by starting navigation
| before I even get into the car. And it does clearly show
| how much time alternate routes will save, so it's easy to
| see when a detour through a residential neighborhood isn't
| worth the hassle.
| [deleted]
| zippergz wrote:
| For many years post-smartphone I did still use the integrated
| GPS in our cars. Even though the data and UI was generally
| (not universally) worse, having it on the comparatively big
| screen in a central spot, controlling it with the steering
| wheel controls, and not having it consume phone battery,
| outweighed the other factors for me. Then came CarPlay and
| Android Auto and those reason vanished.
| bradwood wrote:
| +1 for "pants". Very retro.
| ratww wrote:
| I remember TomTom being a lot better than the competition,
| though. Most other units were terribly slow and sometimes
| borderline unusable. Not to mention the updates... not
| software updates, but the map updates. I still remember my
| parents, with the help of my siblings, spending weeks trying
| update their cheap Chinese GPS using instructions from random
| internet forums, only to give up and get a more expensive
| TomTom unit. The Chinese unit was given away at a Facebook
| group to someone more adventurous.
|
| Of course, mobile apps have definitely caught up years ago,
| and I believe you that they're even better now.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > If it was any good it has a ton of advantages over using
| Google, including display on the "speedometer" screen.
|
| Just as a quick note, when I use Apple Maps via CarPlay on my
| 2020 Subaru it does display the next turn on the instrument
| cluster. This doesn't work with Google Maps via CarPlay, so
| it might be a private CarPlay API that only Apple's first-
| party apps can use.
| asdff wrote:
| I have no experience with tom tom but I was a garmin user,
| and I got the sense that tom toms were pretty much identical.
| IMO an integrated tom tom into the car, if it performs as
| well as the external unit, would be amazingly better than
| your cell phone. The biggest advantage imo is satellite
| coverage is much better than quality data network coverage.
| I'm not even talking about in the boonies. Plenty of times in
| the middle of LA county I am sitting there waiting on a
| seemingly stalled LTE connection to render a map I supposedly
| had already cached locally according to google maps.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| CarPlay, at least (and I kinda assume Android Auto) uses
| the car's built-in GPS receiver when available. Doesn't
| necessarily solve the non-cached maps when LTE is
| unavailable problem, though.
| cgriswald wrote:
| I have an older in-car system and my experience is the
| opposite.
|
| First, the car doesn't download map data. I'm stuck with
| what was on the car when I bought it unless I want to pay
| an unreasonable amount to update it.
|
| Second, it does download traffic data, but it's so slow
| that it's useless. I took its advice once and it cost me
| over an hour, because the alternate route had already
| filled up and had the disadvantage of not being a freeway.
|
| Third, _it can 't navigate a path without connecting to the
| satellite_ (seemingly for traffic data, but possibly it
| isn't even calculating the path locally). So when I visit
| downtown SF, don't have up-to-date maps, and I'm inevitably
| behind some building blocking my southern view, it just
| abandons me.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Third, it can't navigate a path without connecting to
| the satellite
|
| How else would it work? Just sense which way the wheels
| are pointing and track the speedometer?
| cgriswald wrote:
| I perhaps should have said find rather than navigate. I
| don't expect turn-by-turn navigation when it has no way
| of knowing where I am. I'm not talking about it directing
| me along a path; but about finding the path in the first
| place.
|
| It should use the last known location and vector to find
| a route. It doesn't. My guess is that it loses the
| satellite, sees it again and starts recalculating, loses
| it, and repeats this cycle. Unless the satellite is
| visible for a long enough period, it never produces _any_
| path. Even an out-of-date path would be more useful than
| simply nothing.
| mynameishere wrote:
| That, of course, is called dead reckoning and some GPSes
| have it, but I wouldn't trust it for very long. [1] I'm
| not sure what cgriswald is on about. Maybe he just lives
| in a tunnel or some dead zone, because I've never lost
| satellite connections. Maybe cellphones can triangulate
| via cell towers? But how is he getting cell data in his
| tunnel?
|
| [1] Pre-GPS systems used this https://ndrive.com/brief-
| history-gps-car-navigation/
| cgriswald wrote:
| When I lose navigation I just do without. I haven't
| replaced it with Google or any other cell-based app. The
| satellite radio often also drops out in these moments
| despite having a buffer.
|
| Edit: Ah, I see, I meant something sort of other than
| that read. I've certainly had the experience of not being
| able to download maps, but mostly on hikes in the middle
| of nowhere. When I use navigation on foot in the city,
| hadn't had the problems I have with in-car nav.
| gh02t wrote:
| Don't forget the best part -- if you do want to update
| the maps they want to charge you 300+ dollars every year!
| nsonha wrote:
| Is that an exorbitant amount of money for maintaining a
| (global?) digital map? Google messes up our sense of
| value with their ad money.
| moonchrome wrote:
| >Is that an exorbitant amount of money for maintaining a
| (global?) digital map?
|
| Absolutely - Google is just one player, Apple Maps, Bing
| Maps, OSM.
|
| Charging consumers 300$/year for map updates would never
| work even if free offerings didn't exist - they are just
| targeting a small niche and optimizing (ie. even if they
| made the price 30$/year most people would still use phone
| maps so they might as well milk the market that wants to
| pay for their solution as high as they can). If there
| were no free competitors someone would drive the mass
| market price down way lower than 300$.
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _First, the car doesn 't download map data. I'm stuck
| with what was on the car when I bought it unless I want
| to pay an unreasonable amount to update it._
|
| Apparently car navigation maps are a thing that you can
| also pirate. I think I saw a Windows tool for downloading
| Mercedes-Benz map updates. Never tried it though, since I
| was pretty content to sticking with Google Maps and a
| phone mount.
| brnt wrote:
| My car manufacturer just posts an update every year that
| I can tranfer myself to the SD card that it reads off.
| Pretty nice.
| krisoft wrote:
| > Third, it can't navigate a path without connecting to
| the satellite (seemingly for traffic data, but possibly
| it isn't even calculating the path locally).
|
| I'm confused by what you are saying here. In-car
| navigation use satelites to know where the car is. If it
| can't path plan without satelite connection then that is
| most likely because it is waiting for a localisation fix.
|
| Trafic information could be coming through satelite
| broadcast but I doubt that it does.
|
| There is no way that a navigation tool would receive path
| planning through satelite. Two way communication is much
| more complicated than one-way reception, and there is no
| way it would be financially worth doing that.
| cgriswald wrote:
| See my response to the sibling poster:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31587520
| cjblomqvist wrote:
| There is an alternative to "wasting" money to give a second
| gold vein. You can just do the cash cow thing and then die.
| That's a totally reasonable. If TomTom don't think they can use
| the money better than other investment alternatives (that their
| investors have), then they shouldn't.
|
| Of course, politics and personal interests. But sometimes it's
| just better to allocate resources to something where they're
| better utilized.
| enkid wrote:
| Has a CEO ever been hired to do this? I just don't see a
| business ever saying don't invest in us because there are
| better alternatives.
| jackweirdy wrote:
| Some see paying out dividends as saying "you can do more
| with this money than we can right now"
| mason55 wrote:
| That's how companies used to work. You get some people &
| capital together to accomplish something and once you've
| accomplished it you shut down and distribute the company
| assets.
| speed_spread wrote:
| That Nokia guy when they "sold" to Microsoft. He was the
| captain put in place to run the ship aground.
| __alexs wrote:
| They are called liquidators.
| MichaelBurge wrote:
| REITs are required by tax law to pay out 90%+ of their
| income, and everyone invests in them specifically for the
| dividend.
|
| If the stock price gets too high, they always dilute it by
| issuing new shares to raise money for new projects. So
| you're never expecting lots of appreciation.
|
| There's hundreds of them, and also many private REITs that
| are unlisted with the same fundamental idea.
|
| Oil, utilities, REITs, small business lenders, etc. all
| have investors expecting management to just sit there,
| don't kill the golden goose, and pay regular dividends.
| serial_dev wrote:
| When I was reading the comment, I thought the same: why don't
| companies just accept that they have one good project, focus
| on it 100%, stay good at it, and when the market dies, the
| company could die with it. There is no shame in milking one
| product for 20 years, providing a living to
| hundreds/thousands, then just scale back to maintenance and
| eventually close things down.
|
| It doesn't really happen in practice, because no "visionary
| CEO" will say "we couldn't come up with a better idea than
| what we are doing now, so let's just call it a day in terms
| of exploring other ideas, and focus on this one product".
|
| My current company is a retail company with both lots of
| physical locations and web shop/mobile app. We always try to
| come up with features that users can use in the physical
| stores, and those features get practically zero traction.
| Nobody is willing to say that the people who go to the
| stores, in a big percentage, won't use our apps, and the
| people who use the apps/web shop don't care about the
| physical stores. Every product person wants to combine these
| two, and I don't understand why.
|
| (I guess, that's why I'm not in charge of business decisions
| :))
| nradov wrote:
| That is exactly the business model for some private equity
| firms (corporate raiders). They identify undervalued
| companies with strong revenue and significant assets where
| incompetent management is wasting resources and buy the
| company. Then they stop investing in growth, cut expenses
| to the bone, borrow against the assets, issue huge
| dividends to shareholders, and allow the company to
| gradually die. There's nothing really wrong with this
| approach and it probably helps increase overall economic
| growth through better capital allocation. But it can be a
| rough ride for employees caught in the process.
| eezurr wrote:
| This isn't a negative/bitter comment. Genuinely amazed at
| the quality, and just curious.
|
| Wow, are you an expert in soft talk? Or do you view
| employees as dispensable assets (edit: on second thought,
| don't answer this question, I can't think of a way to
| word it where it's not loaded)? This is a genius level
| euphemistic, soft, fluffy description that skillfully
| buries the collateral damage of said practice.
|
| Politics aside (really), it's akin to saying "The
| Europeans identified new areas of trade and set out to
| build business relationships with their over-seas
| counterparts. They ended up discovering a new continent
| and over hundreds of years built a new empire from
| nothing. A few natives were forced to change their ways
| of living, but there's nothing really wrong that; it
| helped increase the overall quality of life and economic
| output for all parties involved. It was a rough ride for
| the natives caught in the process though".
|
| That is just me attempting to copy-cat your skills, first
| thing I could think of.
| rejectfinite wrote:
| Why call out "the europeans" like this?
|
| The places we won over already had domestic slaves.
|
| Plus ur right.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > But it can be a rough ride for employees caught in the
| process.
|
| Or an opportunity. They should see the private equity
| firms coming in as a signal it's time to jump ship and
| not liquidate their stocks (actually, renegotiate your
| ESPP while you look out for the next thing!).
| scotty79 wrote:
| > why don't companies just accept that they have one good
| project, focus on it 100%, stay good at it, and when the
| market dies, the company could die with it.
|
| Because corporations are organisations (that develop some
| bureaucracy) and the main existential purpose of every
| bureaucratic organisation is to survive and grow. No
| corporation will just voluntarily die I think. First it
| will be sold, reorganized, reimagined, reinvented,
| downscaled, pivoted and all that good stuff.
| babypuncher wrote:
| > go deeper into cooperation with car manufacturers to provide
| builtin navigation in cars.
|
| I feel like this is a dying market as well. Why would I pay
| $200/year to update the maps in my car's mediocre navigation
| system when I can just turn on Apple CarPlay/Android Auto and
| get the same excellent navigation system I enjoy on my
| smartphone?
| Bud wrote:
| It's not dying, it's a dead market. Some haven't quite
| realized that yet, but they will soon enough. Nobody can
| complete with Apple Maps or Google Maps, going forward. Not
| even on quality, let alone the combination of quality and
| price.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| My car's built-in navigation can do things Apple CarPlay
| can't, like HUD, dashboard mapping, dead-reckoning navigation
| in tunnels, fuel management, etc.
| andiareso wrote:
| ...until feature parity. Soon Apple/Google will be able to
| integrate with those features too. Aside from "dead-zones",
| I'm sure they will eventually have more integrations with
| car interfaces.
|
| Even so, both Google and Apple seem to predict your
| location when signal drops. Somehow I still get decent
| navigation when I am in the middle of nowhere Iowa and have
| no cell service. Obviously the maps are cached, but somehow
| it knows I'm still moving. Must be accelerometer and
| gyroscope? IDK
|
| I'd really like dash HUD integration with CarPlay.
| sophacles wrote:
| GPS has nothing to do with cell signal. GPS is it's own
| signal from satellites that your phone has no problem
| receiving in a place like Iowa. In fact Iowa has a lot of
| things going for it to enhance GPS receivership - it's
| flat so you can see most of the sky, it's open - there's
| just not a lot of vegetation to absorb the signal coming
| from overhead (e.g. trees), its in the middle of the US
| which means there's always going to be 4 or 5 satellites
| with a line of sight to your phone.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > how companies become corporations
|
| Aren't all companies corporations?
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| No, a corporation is a specific type of business arrangement.
| For example, you can have a limited liability company (LLC)
| that is wholly owned by an individual.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| I don't think TomTom changed what type of company it was.
| scotty79 wrote:
| TomTom started as a small software company named "Palmtop
| Software" and was doing exactly that. Random software for
| palmtops. I'm not sure, but I think they might have
| changed their formal business structure along with the
| name once they discovered that they created killer app
| for palmtops that makes customers buy palmtops as fast as
| they were made so they can use just their app on them.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| Gotcha. You meant something more like "wasn't TomTom
| already a corporation?"
| throwawaycfg wrote:
| Join IBM
| m463 wrote:
| I think there's a place for offline maps, both in terms of
| connection reliability and privacy.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| antholeole wrote:
| What?
| wly_cdgr wrote:
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