Grab built its own map in Southeast Asia, and is now going after Google
Grab built its own map in Southeast Asia, and is now going after Google
The super-app uses its own drivers and cameras to create hyperlocal maps in eight countries.
Grab is just one of the corporate contributors of OpenStreetMap, Grab's "own map" is not theirs, it's ours, "OpenStreetMap contributors" is the copyright holder, and copyright managed by the OpenStreetMap Foundation.
Grab is a Gold corporate member of the foundation, it means it pays EUR 15000 annually. You can see other corporate members here.
The license of the data is called ODbL, they call it open source in the article, but software licenses don't work well outside the software world, it's a database license. ODbL has one requirement: If you display the map, or any extracted data, you have to display the attribution text, which reads "© OpenStreetMap". In the article there is a map, and they don't display this attribution, so this article does not comply with the license of the map it tries to advertise...
This whole article sounds like an ad for Grab. More technological info about how Grab employees contribute to the map on the OSM wiki: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Grab
Edit: One more thing about Grab: they bought the Google Streetview alternative Kartaview in 2019 from Telenav. Kartview had a FOSS Android client, its old version is still on Fdroid. After the takeover Grab still published source changes and releases to Github, but Fdroid compatibility was broken at one point. In 2022 they changed the license of Kartaview, it's not open source anymore...
So it's the classic corporate take on open projects... if they could they would close down OSM and their data, but it seems like at the moment they get far more for that 15000 EUR. The wording of the article hints this, they call it "their" map...
While they support the project financially and contribute back and build nice things on top of the open data, the relationship can remain healthy between an open project and a big, for profit company, there are a lot of good examples for that. But the history of this company is a bit shady in parts, and we have seen things go wrong multiple times...
Solid info there, thank you.
Dude this is so cool! The fact that they're adding all this data to OSM is just the cherry on top 🤌🏼
I had traveled to Southeast Asia recently, and used Grab for the first time there to get a taxi. I was surprised by how precise it was. No wonder.
Grab works great. I remember when they killed Uber in the region. They had the option for cash payment and cash on delivery when Uber was trying to apply it's 1st world western logic of "everyone has a credit card" and failed because that was just plain wrong.
Oh man, that's hilarious. "Our business model doesn't actually even work where we live. But I know what we'll do about that, we're going to do it exactly the same in a place we don't have a clue about!"
The hubris, lol. It's delicious.
When I went to Thailand, Grab was EVERYWHERE.
Same in Malaysia
Same in Vietnam
Wow. That is really cheap for licensing.