Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon Web Services Begin the Overture Maps Foundation to Create Interoperable Open Map Statistics
Faisal Ghaffar 
Some of the world’s best technology companies, including Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and Meta, have partnered with the Linux Foundation to create interoperable and open map statistics. It seems like a move to oppose Google’s dominancy in the mapping kingdom.
The Linux Foundation has officially hosted the Overture Maps Foundation as its new effort, though Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services drive the program with TomTom – a Dutch mapping company.
Powering New Mapping Products
The Overture Maps Foundation aims to power new mapping products using available datasets. Users can use and reuse these products across businesses and applications, with each member using their data and resources in combination.
It is a massively complex challenge for any organization to map the physical environment and each community on the earth, even as they expand and change. Jim Zemlin, the executive director at the Linux Foundation, said it has become significant for the industry to work together to do it to benefit everyone.
Location and map data play a fundamental role in powering everything from self-driving cars and IoT to big data and logistics visualization tools in modern society. The auspices of one or two companies can have all the data to make it hugely restrictive for what companies can do with the statistics and what features they suggest involving license costs.
The parent company of Facebook – Meta has invested in spatial mapping for emerging technologies like Metaverse. According to Jan Erik Solem, the Map engineering director at Meta, it is an impressive experience to understand and mix into a physical environment to ensure the embodied internet of the future.
Google Continues to Rule
Google makes a notable exception from founding members of the Overture Maps Foundation. Such huge names and their opponents from the technology area have partnered, perhaps a demonstration of the iron grip Google has on the mapping realm. It has a slowly garnered position since its Android-based mobiles around fifteen years ago.
Meanwhile, iPhone arrived, combining maps and navigation into the hands of millions of people worldwide. It resulted in a notable impact on TomTom, which is known for creating physical navigation devices. The company continues to evolve, strike maps, and partner with Microsoft and Uber while having targeted SDK developers. However, Google and its mapping realm still dominate for the most part. It is something that the new partnership of tech giants will go a long way toward achieving.
Collaboration in Map Building Program
The regulatory and societal pressures have driven the emergence of the new foundation sneering with trends in the technology spectrum with an increased boost to the interoperable and decentralized network.
According to the Linux Foundation, the OpenWallet Foundation will produce interoperable digital wallets against the closed payment ecosystems advanced by Apple and Google.
The founding companies plan to engage in collaborative map-building programs, gain data from myriad open data sources, and knock it into a consistent, standardized, and suitable format for production applications and systems. It will source channeling data from OpenStreetMap and municipalities.
