What3words

What3words is a geocode system for the communication of locations with a resolution of three metres. What3words encodes geographic coordinates into three dictionary words; the encoding is permanently fixed. For example, the omphalos of Delphi, believed by the ancient Greeks to be the centre of the world, is located with ///spooky.solemn.huggers. What3words differs from most other location encoding systems in that it displays three words rather than strings of numbers or letters.

what3words
Founded2013 (2013)
Founders
HeadquartersGreat Western Studios,
London
Websitewhat3words.com
Part of the What3Words grid on the Houses of Parliament showing typical words and their pseudorandom distribution

What3words has a website, apps for iOS and Android, and an API that enables bidirectional conversion between what3words address and latitude/longitude coordinates. As the system relies on a fixed algorithm rather than a large database of every location on earth, it works on devices with limited storage and no Internet connection.

According to the company its revenue comes from charging businesses for high-volume use of the API that converts between 3 words and coordinates; services for other users are free of charge.[1]

History

Founded by Chris Sheldrick, Jack Waley-Cohen, Mohan Ganesalingam, and Michael Dent, what3words was launched in July 2013.[2][3][4] Sheldrick and Ganesalingam originally conceived the idea after Sheldrick struggled to get equipment and bands to event locations on time due to inadequate address information while working as a concert organiser.[5] The company was incorporated in March 2013[6] and a patent application for the core technology filed in April 2013.[7]

In November 2013, what3words raised US$500,000 of seed funding;[8] in March 2014 it raised a second seed round of US$1 million;[9][10][11] in November 2015, it completed a US$3.5 million Series A funding round;[12] and in June 2016, it completed a US$8.5 million Series B round.[13]

In January 2018, Mercedes-Benz bought approximately ten per cent of the company and announced what3words support in future versions of the Mercedes-Benz User Experience infotainment and navigation system.[14] The A-Class, launched in May 2018, became the first vehicle in the world with what3words on board.[15]

Design principles

What3words uses a grid of the world made up of 57 x1012 squares of 3 metres by 3 metres. Each square has been given an address composed of three words. The addresses are available in 43 languages according to the what3words online map (as of May 2020), and the addresses are not translations of the same words.[16][17]

Each what3words language uses a word-list of 25,000 words (40,000 in English, as it covers the sea as well as land). The lists have been manually filtered to take account of word length, distinctiveness, frequency, and ease of spelling and pronunciation, and to reduce potential for confusion, and remove offensive words.[18]

The what3words algorithm distributes similar-sounding three-word combinations around the world to enable both human and automated error-checking. The result is that if a three-word combination is entered slightly incorrectly and the result is still a valid what3words reference, the location will usually be so far away from the user's intended area that the error will be immediately obvious to both a user and an intelligent error-checking system.[19]

The what3words system uses a proprietary algorithm in combination with a limited database; the core technology is contained within a file of about 10 MB. The database is used to assign more memorable words to locations in urban areas.[7] What3words originally sold "OneWord" addresses, which were stored in a database for a yearly fee,[20] but this feature has been cancelled.[21]

The main claimed advantages of what3words are memorability, error-detection, unambiguous nature of words for most everyday and non-technical uses, and voice input.[22]

Emergency services use
See also: Advanced Mobile Location

As of October 2019, 75 English and Welsh emergency services have signed up to the system.[23] In February 2020 it was used for the first time in Scotland by stranded walkers.[24] In the same month it was used for the first time in Australia to rescue a person.[25]

Criticism

Supporters of open standards criticise the what3words system for being controlled by a private business and the software for being patented and not freely usable.[26] That similar addresses are purposely far away from each other is also seen by some as a disadvantage.[27][28][29]

The company has pursued an assertive policy of issuing copyright claims against individuals and organisations that have hosted or published files of the what3words algorithm or reverse-engineered source code that replicates the service's functionality, such as WhatFreeWords.[30] This has extended to removing comments on social media which refer to unauthorised versions.

WhatFreeWords

A group of developers, who wish to stay anonymous, developed and released a free and open source implementation of the what3words algorithm under the name WhatFreeWords.[31] They provided implementations of the algorithm in JavaScript, Python, Go, and Rust, all being released under the CC0 license.[32] The whatfreewords.org website was subsequently taken down following a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) take-down notice issued by What3words. A reverse-engineered encoding scheme and open source implementation was available on the website whatfreewords.net.[33]

Parody

The site has been parodied by others who have created services including What3Emojis[34] using emojis, What3fucks[35] using swear words and What3Numbers[36] using OpenStreetMap tile identifiers.

Awards

See also

References
  1. "How does what3words create revenue?". what3words. Retrieved 26 September 2019.
  2. "'What3Words' Wants To Replace Postcodes With Words – For The Entire Globe". 2 July 2013.
  3. "Location-Pinpointing Startup what3words Sells 10,000+ OneWord Map-Pins In First Week". 8 July 2016.
  4. "what3words team". Retrieved 9 December 2016.
  5. Lanks, Belinda (11 October 2016). "This App Gives Even the Most Remote Spots on the Planet an Address". Medium.
  6. "WHAT3WORDS LIMITED - Overview (free company information from Companies House)". beta.companieshouse.gov.uk.
  7. "A Method and Apparatus for Identifying and Communicating Locations".
  8. "Startup what3words gets USD 500,000 in seed round". Venture Capital Post.
  9. "Location Pinpointing Startup what3words Adds $1M More To Its Seed To Flog More Map Labels". TechCrunch. AOL.
  10. "what3words closes $1m to expand 'alternative to postcodes' mapping service". Startups.co.uk: Starting a business advice and business ideas.
  11. "What3words adds $1M more to seed round". Venture Capital Post.
  12. "what3words Gets $3.5M Led by Intel Capital To Simplify Location Sharing".
  13. "Addressing platform what3words closes $8.5M Series B led by logistics firm Aramex".
  14. "Why Daimler Invested in a Startup That Has Labeled the World With Unique Three-Word Addresses".
  15. Brecht, Michael (5 April 2018). "What3words: Diese Ortungssoftware gibt es bald serienmäßig in Daimlers A-Klasse" – via www.welt.de.
  16. "Online map (showing a point in the featureless Sahara desert; click on the gear icon for Settings and languages)". what3words. Retrieved 5 April 2019.
  17. Feng, Rebecca (11 June 2016). "Startup What3words Aims To Give Billions Of People One Thing They Don't Have: An Address". Forbes. Retrieved 16 November 2019.
  18. "What about swear words?". what3words.
  19. "Why are the words randomly assigned?". what3words.
  20. Lomas, Natasha (8 July 2013). "Location-Pinpointing Startup what3words Sells 10,000+ OneWord Map-Pins In First Week". TechCrunch.
  21. "what3words on Twitter: "we did charge for that functionality but no longer offer it."". 1 May 2015.
  22. "The best navigation idea I've seen since the Tube map". The Spectator. 25 October 2014.
  23. "Three words for a faster emergency response". what3words. 28 October 2019. Retrieved 29 October 2019.
  24. "Walkerstime in trainers rescued in Ben Nevis blizzard". BBC. 11 February 2020.
  25. Power, Julie (18 May 2020). "Three random words saved Cornelia on a cold wet day of bushwalking". Sydney Morning Herald.
  26. "What3words: 'Life-saving app' divides opinion". BBC. 21 September 2019.
  27. "What3Words is quite a find". The Boston Globe. 1 July 2016.
  28. Dodds, Leigh (14 June 2016). "What 3 Words? Jog on mate!".
  29. "What3words". OpenStreetMap wiki. 20 January 2017.
  30. "DMCA takedown of code on Github". GitHub. 5 July 2016.
  31. "About - WhatFreeWords". whatfreewords.net. Retrieved 9 May 2020.
  32. "FAQ - WhatFreeWords". whatfreewords.net. Retrieved 9 May 2020.
  33. "WhatFreeWords". Archived from the original on 17 May 2020. Retrieved 9 May 2020.
  34. "what3emojis". what3emojis.com.
  35. http://www.what3fucks.com
  36. "what3numbers". what3numbers.
  37. Diaz, Ann-Christine (26 June 2015). "What3Words Innovation Grand Prix Cannes – Special: Cannes Lions – Advertising Age". adage.com.
  38. "San Jose: Tech awards honor an array of laureates". 12 November 2015.
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