It was announced earlier this week that the German trio of BMW, Daimler, and VW (Audi) will pay about 2.71 billion Euros and acquire HERE. The consortium is planning to hire more software engineers to continue the path-breaking work done by HERE in the field of navigation and vehicle automation. While the deal value is much lower than the rumored $4 billion-plus that Nokia was asking for and the $7 billion-plus that Nokia paid while acquiring Navteq, the idea of turning HERE into a platform that can be used across the auto OEM community is novel and could change the way this industry does innovative development. HERE is the ideal choice for these OEMs to prevent Google from gaining an upper hand in this market. The surprising part is the omission of VW from the roster of OEMs considered by the consortium to provide HERE’s platform for free without a licensing fee, because VW has just signed a five-year contract with TomTom; instead it includes FCA, Renault, PSA, Ford, GM and Toyota. Despite all of these minute details, the promise from the consortium to not to interfere in HERE’s operational business and to us it as an open platform will do greater good for this industry.

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