Ola vs Google. The two tech giants are clashing over maps!
Ola founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal is pushing Indian developers to opt for Ola Maps rather than Google Maps, claiming that the former “outperforms” the latter in key metrics.
The Ola vs Google affair has seen the former exit Google Maps and opted for its own in house navigation tools and technologies for cab operations, meaning Ola Maps.
Ola’s Point
Aggarwal argues that Western apps (such as Google Maps) fail to recognise street names, urban changes and dense traffic. On the other hand, Ola Maps, he claims, tackles all these complexities with AI-powered India-specific algorithms and real time data from millions of vehicles.
Whether it is location accuracy or search accuracy, Aggarwal says, even search latency, Ola Maps is clearly ahead.
Ola Maps is snapping ties with Microsoft’s Azure cloud and is shifting workload to the cloud service of its sister service Krutrim.
“We used to spend 100 crore a year but we’ve made that zero this month by moving completely to our in house Ola Maps,” he was quoted as saying.
Google’s Response
In response, Google Maps said it was cutting the price by up to 70% for developers from August, besides offering information about EV charging stations and AI-driven routing capability to reduce narrow road usage for four wheeler drivers.
Google claimed its new offerings were not in response to the challenge from Ola, rather “We are serving our user base and partner community. This is something our partners have been requesting us for a while,” said Miriam Daniel, vice president and general manager at Google Maps.
She claimed that this is something they had been working on for some time, “to make sure our infrastructure, our pricing systems and localised and adapted to the needs of our partners in India.”
Google Maps is starting to roll out its new features in eight cities and has promised to expand the number of cities soon.
