LTA wins — and to be fair, so do Singaporeans — when they open their content data to all and sundry .

Google wins, and it’s a no-brainer for them to include the information into their platform for more reach and potential ad revenue. Look at just how they destroyed GPS app makers like Garmin and TomTom with their foray into free GPS map applications about a month back. Why would phone makers pay for the GPS app when they can get it for free?

So the ones that lose out are small players in the mapping space, like Gothere.sg. It’s a story oft-repeated in the tech industry: Promising enterprises get killed when a big competitor comes along and throws their huge colossal muscle behind it, no matter if the smaller company has a better product (at least for now till Google throws its R&D behind it).

For example, Gothere.sg has had street level views since last year — TBs of photos they had to go around and shoot all around the island — that Google will get around to do so. Their map data is their own and probably the freshest out there — hours of work driving down every Singapore street — and not based on existing maps of Teledata, like Google takes its map data from. And from a mobile perspective, Gothere (and even Rednano) already had mobile public transport routing available on their platforms, so this isn’t new by any long shot.

I’ll admit I’m biased towards Gothere — no, I don’t work for them in any form, shape or way — because I like the founders, their scrappy fighting ethic (journalists love an underdog), but mainly because their product is an excellent one that was crafted with sweat and tears. Unfortunately, they are running into a behemoth here.

An aside rant here.

Yes, I understand that our government loves to be technology agnostic and always picks the pragmatic route. But besides luring MNCs and importing talents at ludicrous rates, help our local start-ups, even if it means being a little biased.

And I don’t mean by disbursing money via MDA grants — a topic for another time — but by government arms sticking your neck out and giving these start-ups more business rather than doing the “safe” management thing and partner/buy from a large established MNC.