Yes, I'm sure a lot of people would also like to know the real...

Yes, I'm sure a lot of people would also like to know the real reason behind the departure, however unless Mr Paul Lapstun is willing to address the question directly we will never know why. So asking this question just insights more rumours to surface and confuse everyone.

As far as competitors are concern, Spookfish has always been there in the shadows, but to be a true competitor, a company first need to have some market share, but as of today Spookfish do not have any real products to sell and in fact they do not even have any paying customers, so just how Spookfish is 'competing' right now is a mystery.

In regards to Metromaps, they have gone into the aerial imagery space because they are trying to capitalise and grow on their expertise & assets accumulated from AEROmetrex (which provided aerial mapping services to the environmental, mine site, quarry, and landfill industries for over 34 years already). AEROmetrex is based in South Australia, and earns their income from many things, which includes aerial photogrammetry, providing orthophotography products, precision digital surface, terrain, thermal, and 3D models. AEROmetrex also hire out their fleet of drones via their dronesforhire.com.au website.

Although Metromaps / AEROmetrex does have many overlapping aerial imagery assets that can potentially be used to compete with Nearmap, coming from a 'jack of all trades' GIS operation and also having been used to selling to an exclusive set of niche clients with deep pockets, Metromap's current pricing really shows their legacy business culture.

Metromaps' rural/regional coverage is great, but their metro city coverage is not as extensive as Nearmap.

Metromaps is 4 times as expensive as Nearmap.

Metromaps' 8cm resolution is still behind those of Nearmap at 2.8" or 7.1cm.

Metromaps' maximum update cycle is 4 times a year whereas Nearmap is up to 6 times a year & more for special events.

Metromaps do not provide any integrated specific toolsets that are available on the browser that supports the different industries such as Solar, Real Estate, Construction / Building, etc...

In short, although Metromaps is doing better than Spookfish as a 'competitor', they are not competing in the same space & with the same offerings as Nearmap.

With the confirmed rollout of HyperCamera2, Nearmap can now aggressively reduce both capture COST and TIME. Together with the new Oblique and 3D imagery served on an extremely scalable cloud based infrastructure, any 'would-be' competition that are left behind right now will find themselves forever trying to catch up.