[GeoStL] Re: Garmin is now competing with Groundspeak - new geocaching site
- From: Mike Lusicic <lusicic@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: geocaching@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2010 11:59:42 -0600
-
I have mixed feelings about this, but I guess time will tell.
First, I like the idea of competition. Glen said that GC.COM has
competition, but I am not sure they are large enough to matter. But then
again, maybe I just don't get around enough.
On the other hand, Garmin may be getting to be like Microsoft. They want
to "own" the entire sport and control it an mold it into what they want
it to be. Somewhat like GC.COM does as well, except they don't
manufacture the hardware.
While I believe that perhaps GC.COM is not a profit oriented as Garmin,
they do have controlling issues and don't seem to want to honor
reasonable changes to the game. So healthy competition is good.
Monopolies are not so good. Benevolent monopolies are as rare as
benevolent dictatorships.
What would be nice is if each could cross reference the other and you
could access both from one. The first one to do that is going to have a
winner. For example, in your case, if opencaching can have entries for
GC caches, but tack on their own ratings / logs, then you would have
your rating systems for GC's caches. Plus, it would bring the existing
cache base into opencaching in a way so they don't have to wait for a
bunch of hides before they become a viable alternative.
Not sure what the advantage would be to GC until a lot of people shift
over to opencaching because of those advantages. That is where the
competition may come in and GC might adopt the better features of
opencaching.
While GC may complain if opencaching (OC) starts "listing" their caches,
I don't see that they would have any real basis for stopping the
practice. If people upload their GPX files, OC is not accessing the data
illegally, and will eventually have a near duplicate of the active
caches. Adding their rating system is nothing different than a web site
that rates restaurants or logs visits to restaurants. So it would seem
that OC would be free to do such things. GC may try to plug data leaks,
but anything they do would alienate their users and make the situation
worse.
It could be interesting.
On 12/8/2010 10:38 AM, Jim Bensman wrote:
http://garmin.blogs.com/my_weblog/2010/12/geocaching-free-for-all-garmin-launches-opencachingcom.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Garmin+%28Garmin+Blog%29
<http://garmin.blogs.com/my_weblog/2010/12/geocaching-free-for-all-garmin-launches-opencachingcom.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Garmin+%28Garmin+Blog%29>
http://www.opencaching.com/
Not sure what I think of this. But I like the ability for rating the
caches. I also think I like there being competition with
Groundspeak. I signed up for an account.
Jim Bensman
"Nature Bats Last"
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