With whole lot of due respect to your experience, I'd still like to say a few things:
1. If a small feature is tricky to do and has a lot of strategic importance for a bigger platform, it makes complete sense to go for it and also protect the IP for it. We did just that.
You may be aware that Microsoft ended up paying huge money to Ric Richardson for his obvious technology which could have been thought of by 1000s of people before. It's just that he implemented it earlier and protected it as well.
2. >> And thinking you can outcompete Google on a "technical" innovation is folly.
We still feel that our solution is better than Google's even today. It may sound little finicky but we can prove it as well.
3. We were always aware that Google would do it some day. Yahoo did it earlier and we were cool. Microsoft is still struggling to achieve it. We just got hurt because G guys talked to us earlier and their official story looks too hollow.
Let me also confess that we have filed for a patent already and that many people guided us that we can potentially allege Google to be infringing on our patent. But because we still don't have it granted, we're just raising the genuine voice against the pain that RouteGuru hasn't been patronized anywhere despite the fact the Google has admired us for this innovative solution and learnt from us as well.
I am not a big software patents guy, so I don't really like the idea that you can patent this type of thing. Thus I don't like to encourage behaviors whose exit strategy is patent troll, but that's another story.
Your solution might be technically superior, but the less-technically savvy way (ugc or such) is still as useful. Also clearly streetview is designed with the idea of becoming the ultimate landmark-based navigation.
I will yield that I know jack squat about the mapping industry or about what your company does (as that wasn't really what your post was about).
I was just using your post to illustrate a point about something I see happen frequently. It saddens me to see so many people's startups get (predictably) crushed.
1. If a small feature is tricky to do and has a lot of strategic importance for a bigger platform, it makes complete sense to go for it and also protect the IP for it. We did just that.
You may be aware that Microsoft ended up paying huge money to Ric Richardson for his obvious technology which could have been thought of by 1000s of people before. It's just that he implemented it earlier and protected it as well.
2. >> And thinking you can outcompete Google on a "technical" innovation is folly.
We still feel that our solution is better than Google's even today. It may sound little finicky but we can prove it as well.
3. We were always aware that Google would do it some day. Yahoo did it earlier and we were cool. Microsoft is still struggling to achieve it. We just got hurt because G guys talked to us earlier and their official story looks too hollow.
Let me also confess that we have filed for a patent already and that many people guided us that we can potentially allege Google to be infringing on our patent. But because we still don't have it granted, we're just raising the genuine voice against the pain that RouteGuru hasn't been patronized anywhere despite the fact the Google has admired us for this innovative solution and learnt from us as well.