Bing is owned by Microsoft, and Microsoft is a platinum corporate member of the foundation, it means they pay at least € 30,000 annually.
They won’t disappear soon, they need map data and the other option would be paying to google.
Actually Ms, Meta, Amazon started to support osm because they figured out they can’t really compete against google individually, supporting an open project is cheaper than developing their own maps, or paying millions to google (remember, google maps is free only to individuals, companies have to pay a lot). They don’t really have other option, and the license of osm is very corporate friendly.
Bing at least provides their imagery as a resource you can use to update osm too. Wonder how that happened and how long it will last
Bing is owned by Microsoft, and Microsoft is a platinum corporate member of the foundation, it means they pay at least € 30,000 annually.
They won’t disappear soon, they need map data and the other option would be paying to google.
Actually Ms, Meta, Amazon started to support osm because they figured out they can’t really compete against google individually, supporting an open project is cheaper than developing their own maps, or paying millions to google (remember, google maps is free only to individuals, companies have to pay a lot). They don’t really have other option, and the license of osm is very corporate friendly.
@infeeeee @Munkisquisher Bing providing access to their imagery goes back when Steve Coast worked for them.