Google Navigation is not "evil" putting car GPS vendors out of business, it was inevitable result of 4 trends. A) Price of online/cloud driving directions is already zero B) GPS got miniaturized/commoditized into phones (+SkyHook) C) 3G got rolled out, now reasonable bandwidth available in your car D) Phones got smart, powerful CPU and graphics.
I've seen numerous comments calling this act a violation of "do not evil". If you've had free online driving directions for the last 10 years, and a phone with GPS that can run complex apps, then all you need to do is add in ubiquitous bandwidth/connectivity to bring the cloud based mapping ($0 price) to the car device, obviating the need for a single function device. The ecosystem trends already pointed to the eventual doom of these devices, the writing was on the wall. Google just moved first on Droid.
- Ray Cromwell
couldn't agree more, wasn't "no turn by turn using google maps api" a big enough clue for people?
- lypanov