Hi, I'm from Seznam.cz and I'm in charge of Mapy.cz. Let me explain a couple of things and correct some misinformation:
1) As was already said above, Seznam.cz is not a startup, it's been here longer than Google, and it's one of the biggest Czech companies (over 1000 employees). In terms of monthly user counts, it is still number one on Czech internet, in front of Google.
2) the imagery is not taken by drones, nor helicopters, but airplanes. Nobody is able to take imagery of large areas (hundreds of kilometres) by drones, it is only possible by airplanes, in today's state of technologies. We have our own imagery, not bought from anyone.
3) the 3D model is computed from the aerial imagery (ortofoto + oblique). No manual work is performed. It is a highly demanding computation, consuming months even on huge cloud of top-notch supercomputers - which is why it is not easy even for Google, to do it on large areas around the whole globe. The computation will run for almost one year, to create 3D model of thousands of square kms, which we plan to publish this year.
4) our maps earn money by selling our primary data, which we produce (ortofoto, oblique, Panorama, etc.), for commercial professional users (not only in Czech rep., but also abroad). The company as a whole earns money from selling media space on its 20-30 web sites (seznam.cz, firmy.cz, sreality.cz, novinky.cz, etc.). The company is highly innovative in terms of technologies (as I describe above), as well as in user interface (our GUI never copies other designs, we constantly create and test newer and newer GUIs).
1) As was already said above, Seznam.cz is not a startup, it's been here longer than Google, and it's one of the biggest Czech companies (over 1000 employees). In terms of monthly user counts, it is still number one on Czech internet, in front of Google.
2) the imagery is not taken by drones, nor helicopters, but airplanes. Nobody is able to take imagery of large areas (hundreds of kilometres) by drones, it is only possible by airplanes, in today's state of technologies. We have our own imagery, not bought from anyone.
3) the 3D model is computed from the aerial imagery (ortofoto + oblique). No manual work is performed. It is a highly demanding computation, consuming months even on huge cloud of top-notch supercomputers - which is why it is not easy even for Google, to do it on large areas around the whole globe. The computation will run for almost one year, to create 3D model of thousands of square kms, which we plan to publish this year.
4) our maps earn money by selling our primary data, which we produce (ortofoto, oblique, Panorama, etc.), for commercial professional users (not only in Czech rep., but also abroad). The company as a whole earns money from selling media space on its 20-30 web sites (seznam.cz, firmy.cz, sreality.cz, novinky.cz, etc.). The company is highly innovative in terms of technologies (as I describe above), as well as in user interface (our GUI never copies other designs, we constantly create and test newer and newer GUIs).
Howgh :)