I agree, but to charge for it would be an admission from Google that their profitability is under siege. It also opens the door to competition from Apple and Microsoft who could continue to offer free maps (their side hustles* (phones and Apps/OSes) continue to cover those costs).
The challenge I think for Google would be to charge what supporting maps actually costs to have the unit be revenue neutral. Street view fleets, satellite imagery, and 100,000+ machines with multi-petabyte data sets cost a bit, not to mention the engineers who work on massaging the data, developing the hardware, and operating the equipment.
Would you pay $25/month for Google Maps access? Or would you switch to Open Street Maps, Bing Maps and/or Apple Maps which were still free.
* In theory everything is a side hustle to the business of collecting data on people but Microsoft and Apple have revenue streams that aren't as threatened by increasing data privacy efforts that Google's are.
The challenge I think for Google would be to charge what supporting maps actually costs to have the unit be revenue neutral. Street view fleets, satellite imagery, and 100,000+ machines with multi-petabyte data sets cost a bit, not to mention the engineers who work on massaging the data, developing the hardware, and operating the equipment.
Would you pay $25/month for Google Maps access? Or would you switch to Open Street Maps, Bing Maps and/or Apple Maps which were still free.
* In theory everything is a side hustle to the business of collecting data on people but Microsoft and Apple have revenue streams that aren't as threatened by increasing data privacy efforts that Google's are.