I left Microsoft in 2015 and at that time my team was in private offices. Some had their own office, some shared with one other person. It was based solely on number of years at the company.
We tried out "as the crow flies", OSM with the OSRM Distance Matrix API, and the Google Maps Distance Matrix API. We're currently using Google API although we may switch back to OSRM for scaling purposes.
Thanks for the question! I'll admit I have limited knowledge about those services, but I believe they solve a slightly different problem. Pathfinder's primary use is services that have N drivers that can service any of M transportation requests.
The GraphHopper and OSRM Matrix APIs are closer to what Pathfinder does, however they do not assign route segments to vehicles. Pathfinder is perhaps one abstraction layer over them.
What are you using for calculating the time or distances between the services? (Edit: okay, saw another comment stating you are using Google Matrix API)
Basically you need a distance matrix for your vehicle routing problem.
At the moment, we only support Google SignIn for creating accounts. We will certainly support more options in the future, but up until now we've been spending most of our time building our routing and api servers.
I understand your concern. At this point, we have no plans to charge for Pathfinder. Furthermore, if you're concerned about future viability of the API, all of our code is MIT-licensed at https://github.com/csse497 so it can be self hosted.
What is your plan for long term profitability if you have no plans to charge for this? I am nervous building tech around a free service that may either transition to a deal-breaking price (google app engine) or may disappear entirely due to the business going under.
