If you're a Pokémon fan, you've certainly heard of or even played the famous augmented reality game Pokémon Go, which debuted around 2016 and made the dream of becoming a Pokémon trainer more real than ever, leading millions of people to the streets in search of first-generation Pokémon, conquering gyms, and attending events that brought the community together.
But what if I told you that this game, which led more than 230 million people to leave their homes to hunt Pokémon scattered around the world, wasn't actually intended to be a game, nor even to entertain people, but rather to use user data to create a 3D map of the world? Conspiracy theory? No, this is the news that surprised everyone who has heard of Pokémon Go and the company responsible for launching the game, Niantic. Come check out this story!
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Niantic used Pokemon Go to map the world!
Let's start by understanding the scale of the Pokemon Go phenomenon, with some data. According to Brian McClendon, CTO at Niantic Spatial, a company that was part of Niantic, "500 million people installed the app in 60 days," which is an absurd number for any app launch. You might question whether that number was high because of the hype, but in 2024, eight years after the launch, there were still over 100 million players.
Imagine the amount of data they managed to collect, using player location data, the camera used to capture players, and the entire community that mapped various points in cities to place PokéStops and Gyms. Millions of people ended up contributing to the creation of a 3D model of the world, and now, with the partnership between Niantic Spatial and Coco Robotics, one of the objectives has become clear. This company is a last-mile delivery startup that uses robots to deliver orders, and now, with the data collected from players, it will be used to assist in these deliveries.
The game that was meant to be entertainment for Pokémon players ended up becoming a global geospatial infrastructure company, as more than 500 million players hunted Pokémon around the world. This only shows once again that if the product you're using is free, then most likely you are the product!
If you don't pay for the product, you are the product!
This story of Niantic using video and image data captured by millions of users around the world serves to remind us of one of the most used phrases in modern capitalism: "If you don't pay for the product, you are the product!". Looking for this phrase, it seems to be from Andrew Lewis and said in the documentary, The Social Dilemma, but many may have heard it before, perhaps in another form, reminding us that nowadays, if a service is offered to you for free, you should at least find it strange.
The most absurd thing is that this system where you are the product has been working for quite some time, to the point that it makes us wonder if these platforms that offer free services, sometimes with only a few ads, aren't reaching a point where they already have everything they need from users, such as consumption habits, preferences, and already tested choices of offers, and are thinking of switching to a subscription system to further monetize their user base.
This movement would cause a large migration where a portion of users might end up leaving the platform, but the company wouldn't lose revenue because the remaining active users are now paying a monthly fee to access the services. Furthermore, since the subscription is controlled by the company, the price can end up increasing, according to its interests, giving it greater control over revenue.
