I have been following Mike Dobson of TeleMapics Exploring Local blog as he has been delving into User Generated Content. His latest installment UGC, Map Updating and Market Segmentation gives a good lie of the land as far as Map/GIS data go (as well as business listings goes, i.e. Yellow Books...).
The picture you get is of a fragmented market so many companies are trying to the same thing. I liken it to the way governments have been creating/updating GIS data. I have seen many examples of how cities, counties and states all try to maintain the same datasets independently.
What a waste of time and money! The use of map data from governements was not even mentioned in his blog, but in all actuality the county or city's data is probably much more complete and accurate. It also gets updated as soon as a new road goes in, that can take Navteq and TeleAtlas years sometimes to get added. I know that there are tons of issues surrounding selling/providing government data to private companies, but TIGER data is usually what all of Navteq and TeleAtlas data started out as (some rural areas are still that).
The other point I wanted to bring up was the fact that the ideal solution would be an Open Source map (several examples of this exist i.e. Open Street Map). This Open Source map is where companies/governments should be providing updates to. Then everybody can benefit. I know that is only a dream, but I foresee some type of this happening in the future. For now, why can't Personal Navigation devices (Car Nav Systems, Handheld GPS, Mobile Phone Navigation) provide the User Generated content that they have received to open source maps, so volunteers in open source can correct information. The passive content that those PND devices collect (GPS stream of how all travel) would also be a tremendous help to an open source project.
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