Garmin acquires Groundspeak & Geocaching.com

In a surprise turn of events, it was announced last night that GPS vendor Garmin has officially acquired Groundspeak, and subsequently the official geocaching website, geocaching.com.

This announcement comes several months after Garmin had launched their own geocaching listing service, Opencaching.com. Originally intended to compete as an alternative listing service to the main one found on geocaching.com, it would now appear that Garmin has taken a more direct route, and simply acquired the main listing service itself.

The news that Garmin is taking over Groundspeak and all of the services provided by it is quite a surprise given the rocky history the two companies have had of late. Many geocachers had noted that Garmin had replaced the official geocaching logo on their devices with a more generic icon, and dropped support for the Wherigo platform on their most recent devices.

Groundspeak also seemed to be distancing themselves from Garmin by partnering with other GPS vendors for large events. Even the listing of GPS devices, and other pages within the geocaching.com website had been changed to favor Magellan & Delorme over Garmin. It would now seem that these steps were merely a ruse.

With a larger financial backer behind them, it is likely that we’ll continue to see Geocaching.com grow. Whether or not this will be to the benefit or the downfall of the sport remains to be seen. Hopefully we’ll see in the short term what this means and whether or not they’ll be adding the underwater basket weaving geocache. My hopes are high.