Amazon and Microsoft could be natural allies for HERE as both compete against Google in information services. German auto makers have been wary of allowing Google to get too deep inside their vehicles, fearing that they could lose control of data produced by the car and its users and sacrifice potential profits.
“We’ve always said that we wanted to protect our independence, ” Mr. Weber said. Amazon and or Microsoft could enhance HERE’s service by providing cloud services and big data analytics, needed to process the huge amounts of data and transform that data into a basis for profitable data-based services.