Remember the court ruling that Streetdirectory infringed Singapore Land Authority's (SLA) intellectual property by claiming that the maps in its website are theirs?
Streetdirectory intends to appeal of course, but since several days ago the website is down. Yup, when I need it most. Luckily got the new Mighty Minds bus guide, which is very good in my opinion in locating bus stops and their respectives buses.
My personal opinion about streetdirectory is never so good. They monolopized the online map business in Singapore and as you may have read, sued many companies for publishing their maps without permissions. The out-of- court settlements back then was quite high, in the region of tens of thousands I guess.
And they are making loads of money as well. I have checked their website for advertising rates. They charged like US$30 per one thousand impressions (CPM, M is not million btw). Can you imagine how many users actually view streetdirectory pages daily? Hundreds of thousands you might say. This translates into tens of thousands of revenues each day. All by doing practically nothing. Just hiring some IT staff to maintain the servers and probably some marketing and Search Engine Optimization.
Many online map providers have tried entering the market but failed miserably. Check out www.can.com.sg. It is dying. I'm not aware of any other map providers. Probably only yellowpages, which is not heavily publicized.
So now when streetdirectory got sued, I think they deserved it. They're making so much money by not paying the government the licence to publish the maps. It's like a turnkey website. Money is flowing freely without much cost.
How to deal with the absence of streetdirectory? No problem. Go to www.map.gov.sg. Not as good as streetdirectory, but I believe sooner or later streetdirectory will pay the goverment some fines and but the licence and everything goes back to normal. Only this time, the previously lucky owner will earn less.
