> A big price bump with a few months notice is painful (and I'm glad it's bringing competition), but it tells me they're thinking seriously about how to sustain/develop the product and lets both them and me explore the real value of the service.
This is a bit of “thank you sir may I have another”. 10x price increases? It’s not sustainable? This is just a money grab - they’re not going to give a roadmap for how in the future google maps will be worth 10x the value - it seems to me more of a statement from Google that they have no real competition in the space.
The simple existence of competitors in a market segment is not proof that there is no monopoly. We wouldn't say for example that there are realistic copetitors in the web search space or in the desktop OS space - maps is similar to both of these sitations.
(Now I realise that some people like to argue the toss about whether search and desktop OS are monopolies and to that I have no comment)
It's helpful to think about market share per "competitor", not number of competitors:
"However, from a regulatory view, monopoly power exists when a single firm controls 25% or more of a particular market. For example, De Beers is known to have a monopoly in the diamond industry."
Since API's aren't standardized and conversion from one product to another likely requires development work and probably impacts your usage in some way even then - the barriers to switching are high enough that the availability of alternative maps still doesn't represent a whole lot of competition.
Sure, typically yes. It's not necessary - interoperable APIs exist, and for underdogs they're even attractive as a selling point - but market leaders tend not to play by those rules.
This is a bit of “thank you sir may I have another”. 10x price increases? It’s not sustainable? This is just a money grab - they’re not going to give a roadmap for how in the future google maps will be worth 10x the value - it seems to me more of a statement from Google that they have no real competition in the space.