The Map Room

Last week, the Wall Street Journal ran a story on the digital map “duopoly,” Navteq and Tele Atlas — it starts and finishes like so many local profiles of digital map surveying, but the meat of the article is a look at the digital mapping business, including the question of whether, in the context of the two companies’ buyouts, owning the map data is essential (overstated), whether the duopoly will abuse their position (unlikely), and whether the companies were overvalued at their purchase (almost certainly). (The article has been republished widely; Google Alerts gave me the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.)