Mapillary

Mapillary is a platform which scales and automates mapping at the level of streets. Since 2013 users from about 190 countries send photos of the residential districts using smartphones, and the software of Mapillary integrates them together for creation of breathtaking views. A main competitor of Mapillary is Street View Google service. The feature of Mapillary is that it solves one of the most complex and expensive problems in mapping: updating of the card at the level of streets, i.e. permanent updating these signs, the addresses and other necessary road information.

History

2020: Facebook purchased Mapillary

In the middle of June, 2020 Facebook announced acquisition of Mapillary company. The financial component of the transaction of the company did not begin to be opened.

Facebook looks narrowly at the sphere of cartography long ago: earlier the world's largest social network started the AI tool for users of OpenStreetMap and announced that it is going to create an AR-application on the basis of the three-dimensional map of the world. Against the background of a pandemic Facebook unrolled the interactive map which allows users to monitor distribution of COVID-19. Acquisition of Mapillary, a crowdfunding alternative of Google Street View became the next step.

Facebook purchased competitors of Google Street View

Still all images on Mapillary were available free of charge to any commercial use, but now also commercial users will be able to apply them. How exactly Facebook is going to implement service to the platforms, it is still unknown, but it is supposed that street pictures of the different enterprises soon will appear on the corresponding Facebook pages. Besides, new acquisition should help the company with creation of new applications on the basis of cards.

Mapillary being a main competitor of Google Street View at different times drew attention of other large technology companies, including Amazon. Maps and Bing Maps Apple services tried to compete with Google.^[1]

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