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TIL Mercedes Benz deleted what3words functionality from all their cars.

This would be the same Mercedes Benz who ***invested*** in w3w.

And why did they disable the functionality? Didn’t wanna renew the licence.

Whichever way you read it it’s a shit show.

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I’d say that if one of your investors doesn’t want to buy your product, then your product fucking sucks.

And/or

If your licence fees are so high that even an INVESTOR won’t pay them, your pricing fucking sucks.

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@bloor for normal civilian driving on public roads I can't see what value W3W adds over navigating by postcode (I still use a standalone TomTom navi as my car doesn't have this built in and the screen form factor/aesthetics are better (I don't trust "free" navi apps in case they decide to put ads or other distractions on screen)).

For emergency situations and more precise locations we already have the OS grid system..

https://www.cityam.com/what3words-finances-still-in-red/

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@vfrmedia @bloor

I don't like w3w because it's a proprietary system that's foisted on the public. I had call police from niddle of mowhere at night about a drunk man in danger. I said I'm 1 mile north of where the A123 meets the B456. No clue. I said I can give you a plus code (OLC)? No idea. I can give you GPS lat, lon. No. "Have you got w3w?" NO! Haven't you got a @#ÂŁ& map?! Useless.

I quite like the idea but it needs to be free to be useful.

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@vfrmedia @bloor it’s a product in search of a problem with a solution that is arguably worse than just raw coordinates imo

w3w doesn’t say anything about the location, similar locations have completely different w3ws, and missing minor things like an s moves the point to middle of nowhere, australia

the words it uses are also completely different for most lanugages (except certain language blocs where they seem to be similar)

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@charlotte @vfrmedia plurals, compound words, nato phonetics, homophones, accents, etc etc etc

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@bloor @vfrmedia also like if you cannot use street addresses you likely do not have the network connectivity to figure out your 3 words

meanwhile gps can work completely offline

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@charlotte @vfrmedia you don’t need network connectivity to convert a gps Co-ord to w3w

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@bloor @charlotte

UK (and probably other smaller European countries, where "flattening the globe" doesn't introduce excessive position errors) has its own public funded grid system, even the 6 digit variant is accurate to 100 metres, offline apps exist for the conversion and its taught to kids in school at age 11-14

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zhnrg7h#zcshp4j

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