8 June 2021 – In case you have forgotten, Amazon sells online. I had forgotten. Because over the years, Amazon has gone Googley.
First, it was A9 search with views of the street. Then it was product search, a category of some interest to the GOOG. Next was a fling with Twitch and the content creation sector. Then it was online advertising, which caught the attention of the minions of Zuck.
Now, armed with smart routing and designs on vehicles, the Bezos bulldozer is scooping maps.
In the piece “Amazon Announces a Google Maps Competitor That Uses Esri and HERE Maps” the reporter notes:
Amazon has recently announced the general availability of Amazon Location Service, a platform that’s been in preview since December and is a direct competitor to Google Maps Platform. It’s worth knowing that Amazon Location Service isn’t providing consumers with a navigation application but offering it to its big customers, including enterprises and businesses – the necessary feature arsenal to power location functionality in their software.
With Google Maps becoming somewhat difficult to use (as I have reported in previous posts), Amazon has charted a skirmish or maybe a war with that famous Mountain View company. The angle for Amazon is the enterprise, but my suspicion is that one of the Amazonians will probe the consumer market. If there’s gold in them thar hills, the adventurous at AWS will head in that direction too. Money trumps marketing in many cases.
The author further notes:
Amazon’s purpose was to pack all the necessary solutions into just one product that can provide companies with all the necessary tools they need for location-based applications.
Who loves maps the most? I would suggest public sector entities; for example, enforcement agencies. Amazon’s self-imposed moratorium on police use of its facial recognition software means it had to open other doors to that lucrative market.
What can one do with Amazon maps? Well, based on the article plus some analysis from Ars Technica and other analysts it can make the location data another component of Amazon’s data services and a snap in for the online bookstore’s artificial intelligence and machine learning components.
This past weekend in our weekly BONG! report I noted the growing importance of geolocation and location tracking, especially as regards the cross-correlation on policeware and intelware solutions. Marketing finds the information useful as well, obviously. Google’s continued collecting of location data even when users turned off various location-sharing settings, making popular privacy settings harder to find, and even pressuring LG and its other phone maker partners into hiding their settings, too, showing Google’s need and intent.
There are scores of avenues used by Big Tech to collect user location data, including WiFi and even third-party apps not affiliated with any of them, forcing users to share their data in order to use those apps or, in some cases, even connect their phones to WiFi.
Keep the location data flowing. Google has three reasons:
First, ever increasing revenues are important. Without cash flow, Google’s tough-to-control costs could bring down the company. Geolocation data are valuable and provide a knitting needle to weave other items of information into a detailed just-for-you quilt.
Second, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook pose significant threats to the Google. Amazon is, well, doing its Bezos bulldozer thing. Apple is pushing its quasi privacy campaign to give “users” control (haha). And Facebook is unpredictable and trying to “out Google” Google in advertising and user engagement. These outfits may be monopolies, but monopolies have to compete so high value data become the weaponized drones of these business wars.
Third, Google’s current approach seems to indicate its mostly unaware of how the company gathers data. The systems and methods were institutionalized years ago. What persists are the modules of code which just sort of mostly do their thing. Newbies use the components, and the data collection just functions. Why fix it if it isn’t broken. That assumes that someone knows how to fiddle with legacy Google.
Net net: Big Tech will confuse the field knowing the average consumer (and even data privacy “experts”) will not get it.
And location data is having a (very big) moment. To borrow from my upcoming monograph on cookies, geodata and geographic information system (GIS) software:
+ According to eMarketer (which is subscription-based market research company that provides the best insights and trends related to digital marketing, media, and commerce) location data is the top emerging area that retailers devoted budget towards in 2021 and 2022 – ahead of technologies that tend to get more buzz, such as artificial intelligence/machine learning and the Internet of Things (IoT).
+ Location information has quickly become both widely used and highly valued: According to eMarketer, some 66% of all retailers say geo-tracking is now very important to their business and 85% of high-performing retailers say it is most important. Both are huge jumps from previous surveys.
+ This value extends well beyond the retail vertical. As eMarketer noted in its recent in-depth Zoom chat exploring the topic: with their network of physical stores, retailers put more emphasis on location data than many other industries, but marketers beyond retail are finding the data useful – even distilleries.
+ The clearest benefit of location data for marketing? It provides the best ability to deliver real-time targeted advertising which has experienced a surge in recent years.
In other words, incorporating location data into marketing efforts has valuable benefits for firms of all types, from healthcare offices and mom-and-pop stores to multi-location companies and franchises. Oh, and law enforcement, too 🙂
Location data tracking is ubiquitous. The tension between privacy and innovation in this space is exacerbated by rapid developments in tracking technologies and data analytics methodologies, as well as the sheer volume of available consumer data. The privacy risks associated with these developments are huge and as I noted above, to the extent that current and proposed privacy law protects location data, such protection is limited due to those data analytics methodologies.
More to come.