Google alone tackling this problem for 10 years and then killing it is still better than no one solving this problem and no one getting 10 years of free earthquake alerts.
big companies doing stuff for free can kill industries.
10 years is enough the ensure that any professional and company trying to make a living from earthquake early detection systems is working on something different.
yeah, someone will pop up after they inevitably kill it, but this stuff can end up delaying progress.
Case in point: Google providing Android for free killed Windows Phone, Symbian, PalmOS, Blackberry, and several other attempts to create a mobile device OS
Which was among the reasons that Google did that, not that the company would say so.
Microsoft ran Windows Phone into the ground. I could rant, but WP7 was interesting, WP7.5 was usable, WP8 and WP8.1 were pretty good, and then WM10 was very late and pretty meh. Had WM10 shown up on time and with quality, we would have a different discussion. Lots of OEMs were making phones for WP8, not many for WM10.
Symbian had flirted with Open Source, but IMHO, Nokia's fight with US carriers over shipping a SIP client and the resulting disappearance from the US market of most Nokia phones doomed Symbian... Tech journalism is dominated by US outlets and nobody reported on Symbian phones because they weren't there.
I assume you mean Palm's WebOS, cause PalmOS was pretty stylus driven and ux expectations had moved on. WebOS was neat, but Palm didn't have the corporate resources to support it.
Blackberry certainly had time and resources to compete. BB10 was supposed to be quite good, but maybe a little late.
All of these had what I like to call early mover disadvantage. Being first or at least early to a market makes it hard to adapt when the market changes. Coming in ten years late to smartphones was great for Apple and Google.
Local governments are unable to do it right because, well, they are bureaucrats who cant differentiate the left hand from their right hand. Governments IT systems are eternal money sink holes only producing power points and weekly status reports to be forever forgotten.
