GPS has made a major impact on our world. How is it a free service that anyone with a phone can access? How is it profitable for companies to offer services like navigation without subscription fees or ads?
In: Technology
The US Military originally created GPS for their own purposes.
However, after an airliner accidentally went into Soviet airspace and was shot down, it was made free because the benefits of making it available are so much better than any benefit from keeping it private.
GPS is infinitely scalable — the system costs the same to operate if there’s 500 navy boats using it or 6 billion smartphones. The satellites are just broadcasting their position and time, and anything that knows how to listen to it can use that information to figure out its position.
Now stuff that *uses* GPS like Google Maps is a whole different story. GPS is just finding your position. Navigation is a whole different subject. Google Maps is profitable because it is another mechanism for Google to deliver advertisements, as well as collect data.
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