Shortly before Christmas the Overture Maps Foundation was announced, a collaboration between tech giants Amazon Web Services, Meta, Microsoft, and TomTom to "create reliable, easy-to-use, and interoperable open map data". The geospatial world exploded with speculation about what this might mean for OpenStreetMap and for players like Google and Apple. Is Overture a threat, an opportunity, both, or something else entirely?
Our guest today is Marc Prioleau, geospatial industry veteran (having worked at deCarta, Cloudmade, Mapbox, Uber, and as a consultant for many others) and currently Meta's head of business development for Mapping and Location, to discuss exactly what Overture Maps hopes to be, why it was formed, and its intended place in the geospatial ecosystem. This is the first time one of the members of the OMF consortium has spoken publicly about the initiative.
Relevant links:
On the Geomob podcast every week we discuss themes from the geo industry, interview Geomob speakers, and provide regular updates about our own projects.
Popular podcast topics:
The Geomob podcast is hosted by:
Ed Freyfogle, co-founder of OpenCage
Alastair Graham, freelance geospatial/earth observation consultant.