Google is the "always online" company. So MapQuest should be the anti-Google: make a good, free offline maps app. All of the ones I've tried (on Android, at least) either had too little detail or a cumbersome user interface. But all of them were promoted to me directly by word-of-mouth. Make a great one, and people <i>will</i> spread it around. Become the fanatic's map app. The MapQuest brand could have the perfect retro-niche appeal for this.
Reviving MapQuest seems about as likely to me as AOL reviving it's dialup business. The simple fact is that the quality bar has risen to the point where maps have become a pay to play space with serious table stakes. You can't just buy a bundle of 3rd party data, slap a nice UI on it and call it a day anymore. Maybe MapQuest could do something unique with merging it's brand name with OSM but even that seems like a pretty faint possibility.<p>I have no doubt they could manage to remain profitable for some ungodly amount of time by relying on pure inertia from their legacy customers. But trying to find meaningful ways to grow the brand seems like throwing good money after bad.
Slightly off topic but if you're annoyed with the new Google Maps you can still use the classic version at <a href="https://maps.google.com/lochp" rel="nofollow">https://maps.google.com/lochp</a>.
I find this hard to believe:<p><i>"Though MapQuest still has the second-highest share of the domestic market in online mapping, about 25 percent"</i>
I've been using their API just last week.<p>As far as I know, this is the only free service for driving distances that can be used with maps other than Google's.
I currently work for a bureaucracy that requires that all trips to be mapped ONLY on MapQuest, in order to turn it in to be compensated for the travel. I haven't figured out why. (It's a state bureaucracy, logic isn't their strong suit. They still pay for long distance phone calls, and have to document all long distance phone calls.)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that they can maybe also replace TomTom with location tracking services from Verizon - probably yielding a ridiculously comprehensive tracking for North America (subject to ToC, I'm not a lawyer).