Well, I posted about this on Thursday when it hit – but thought I’d give the heads-up here, too. Seems Garmin has bought ActiveCaptain…
It will be interesting to see where this goes – in many aspects. I know that Garmin was using AC data in their BlueChart app; and it was okay, but definitely not the best. Let’s just say it was the best FREE could buy. So where will it go from here? The big C-MAP/AC integration was more a flop than a coups in my opinion (like the eBoatCards thing) so I would be surprised if Garmin allows that to continue…which will greatly reduce the integration footprint.
But will Garmin also keep the severely outdated and highly questionable (even dangerous in many instances) data in the AC database (e.g. – 10 year old marina reviews, hazards/approaches that are completely wrong, etc.)? All that made perfect sense if your only objective was to build a big database to license and/or sell – but now Garmin is on the hook for that kind of loosey-goosey approach. So the bar has been raised – big time. That approach won’t fly.
There are reasons OpenCPN and Navionics told AC to pound sand. That’s important to remember. On the other hand, there was definitely value in bringing over 250K* users to the table.
(*I actually think that number is quite questionable. Just in December of 2015 on this blog, ACDude was bragging about how AC would have 500K users by the end of 2016…which obviously didn’t happen. So AC was basically at the end of the road anyway I think.)
So, will the adults in the room now do something worthwhile? And will AC now move on to focus on sucking those users up into a darkening data cloud via the SignalK approach in my vid?
We’ll see. It’s definitely an interesting time in boating tech.