Google navigation will kill GPS as we know it
I had wondered what the end game for Google’s aggressive acquisition of street by street view camera data would be and has suspected for a long time that it would be used for a GPS SaaS product. Originally I had figured that Google would collect all of the data, expose the API for a fee and let Garmin/TomTom and the rest buy their service like a Sat Image provider does.
Today, I found out. Google Navigation is the penultimate collection of all of the other previous Google services (GPS, voice recognition, Satellite and other Terrestrial data, Streetview images) thrown into a single service.
Google 411 was a useful service, but it provided Google with far more than just peoples 411 interests, but also helped shape their voice recognition model. Google StreetView was instrumental for the adoption of Maps. GPS on the iPhone was a great look into how GPS on a handset would work and leveraged the already popular search software with relevant user information. And now the mashup of those services combined with Google Search has now created the GPS killer.
Google Navigation is a beta application available to the Google Andriod OS in beta mode. It offers turn by turn directions, POI and natural language intelligence and StreetView as an overlay for it all. I have no idea how TomTom and Garmin will compete with this product, they can only stumble to keep up. The only possible way that they could compete is by begging Microsoft to allow them to integrate Live and somehow establish a dominant product.
Touche Google… you win again.
http://www.google.com/mobile/navigation/index.html#p=default
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGXK4jKN_jY&feature=player_embedded
