alt Hacker NewsI always think that the goal of apps like these is build userbase and then get acquired, like darksky or waze: the big providers realise they have missed a trick and then it becomes the default.
I always think that the goal of apps like these is build userbase and then get acquired, like darksky or waze: the big providers realise they have missed a trick and then it becomes the default.
"Needed tens of dollars of rental compute" isn't much of a moat to get acquired instead of copied.
I loath Waze. Its idea of shortcuts are terrible, its search routinely suggests things hundreds of mile away ahead of the match that's nearby, and sometimes I go through an area of intermittent service where it just decides to stop routing without giving a heads-up.
But Waze is so much better at accurately alerting me to police than my Valentine 1 was that I never even bothered mounting it in my latest car. Google supposedly integrates that data for years now but every time I try it comes up short. Google and Apple Maps are better in every other way, but for me at least, that one feature of Waze is a massive moat.