I'm going to guess: not enough customers to get them to a point where the business is sustainable and not being able to find inverstors that are willing to invest in something like this.
They have a very nice product but competing with the likes of Google is hard.
People don't realize how onerous and expensive it is to run a mapping service (even if you use OSM data). For example, the Google Maps API and the Bing Maps APIs are most likely totally subsidized services. Google/MSFT are able to justify the cost because the mapping tools are used in so many other products. And since the cost of development is spread over multiple places, the true cost of the geo services are not reflected in the prices of the services. Whereas someone like Mapzen has to recoup all of their costs on just the services.
Additionally, companies like Mapzen make this mistake in believing that because Google (and a few others) have this massive Maps API ecosystem that there's a ton of money in this market. I've seen similar investment slides and their argument boils down to something like, "well Google/msft is aggressively going after this market so that means there MUST be money here" and that's the bulk of the justification. Honestly, I don't even think Google/MSFT know why they have been going after the Maps API market so aggressively. For one, Google has completely and utterly failed to leverage the Maps API to transition or segue customers onto Google Cloud Platform where there is obviously a lot of money to be made. So like what else is there? There's no way the geo services business matches the cloud, ads, youtube, or chrome/android business. Not to mention all the other shit going on.
In conclusion, I feel like we will see other services fail as well. I would be SHOCKED to see MapBox continue on or even IPO. They will most likely be sold once investors realize what I've just discussed or shut down. I also predict that Google / MSFT will just limit their interest in this product unless they can find a way to help it drive GCP/Azure business.
Mapbox have products that people want to use. Mapbox GL is an astonishing product almost entirely without competition, and their routing is also top-notch.
It remains to be seen whether 200+ employees and sunk costs is a sustainable business; it's an audacious bet on their part that it is. But Mapbox without doubt has the foundations of a very sustainable business within it.
Mapzen never had the revenue, and never looked like it was trying very hard to get it, presumably betting that its Samsung parent would keep the tap running (and, to their credit, being aggressively open-source so that their work wasn't wasted when the day came that the tap was turned off). A bunch of the stuff they did was technologically really fascinating and valuable, such as Who's On First (their geocoder), but never got to saleable product stage. Commercially Mapzen hobbled themselves for geocoding by their laudable insistence on being a 100% open solution: you simply can't do worldwide, reliable, saleable address-level geocoding with open data yet.
Note too that there are a bunch of less noisy players within the OSM ecosystem - Geofabrik, Thunderforest, Graphhopper - who do work which is often as interesting and performant as the Silicon Valley companies, yet with a much lower profile. If you're looking for alternatives following the Mapzen shutdown, I'd commend all three.
I totally agree that Mapbox has great products. There's no doubt there. My doubt is whether or not the market is big enough to support the development of such products.
My thesis is that "geo services" ventures need to be subsidized or else they can't sustainably exist at prices that developers are today accustomed to pay for.
>But Mapbox without doubt has the foundations of a very sustainable business within it.
Are you sure about that? The world is littered with failed companies with amazing products that couldn't find enough people to sell them to. Just because you have a lot of people who want to buy your $100 bills for $50 doesn't mean you have a strong business.
Google is playing the long game. They want to digitize as much information about the world as possible. Autonomous cars, location recognition from arbitrary photos, location-based marketing, etc. As computing becomes more intertwined with our physical world, there will probably be many new markets where having the best maps is a competitive advantage.
This is most likely the case. Which is why companies like Mapzen and Mapbox will go out of business or sell for cheap in the near future. There is no long game for them to play.
>People don't realize how onerous and expensive it is to run a mapping service (even if you use OSM data).
Yes. Apple learned this with their disastrous rollout of their custom mapping solution a few years back. Mapping/geographic projects are nothing to sneeze at, even for the big guys. There's just so well-integrated and useful that we hardly think about the complication involved.
I was talking only about geo services (aka the APIs), you're talking about the consumer products (the app and the site).
But more to my point Google and MSFT have a "multi-faceted" geo business so they can make money in many different places. Whereas someone like Mapzen or Mapbox ONLY has the geo services/APIs end. So where can the go to subsidize the cost of the services? The answer is they cant so the revenue from the services to carry the entire cost of their efforts.
Sure, we're on the same page. For Google, building out a Maps service is a way to increase inventory for an ad platform. They can accept much lower margins on the geo services business, since they have high margin ads efforts.
Theoretically, if Mapbox could get enough views, they could also enter the advertising market. But from my understanding of their company and business model, that would be a really tough sell.
The first Maps API dropped in 2008. No one company has figured out ads on geo APIS. Not Google. Not FB, MSFT, or anyone else has figured out how to put ads on geo apis. I think its safe to say its never going to happen.
Ha, I did not know that. I knew it came out of the Samsung accelerator, didn't know they were actually owned by Samsung. My guess is probably wrong in that case. However, from all that I can find it states they're supported by Samsung Research, to me that's not the same thing as 'part of' Samsung, which would imply ownership.
> However, from all that I can find it states they're supported by Samsung Research, to me that's not the same thing as 'part of' Samsung, which would imply ownership.
You are correct. They are not owned by Samsung, they were simply part of the accelerator.
Actually, as someone else pointed out, in Mapzen's terms of service:
> These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern the terms by which you (if registering on behalf of yourself) or the entity you represent (if registering as a business) (“Customer,” “you” or “your”) may utilize the mapping tools and services made available by Samsung Research America, Inc. on behalf of its Mapzen business unit (“Mapzen˝ or ˝we˝ or ˝us˝ or “our”).
Seems they were actually part of Samsung. Makes me wonder why they shuttered Mapzen. I can see this being useful to them for Tizen amongst other things.
