What3words

What3words Limited
what3words
FoundedMarch 5, 2013; 11 years ago (2013-03-05) in Royston, Hertfordshire, England[1]
Founders
  • Chris Sheldrick
  • Jack Waley-Cohen
  • Mohan Ganesalingam
  • Michael Dent
HeadquartersLondon, England, UK[2]
  • Increase −£20.7M
[3] (2023)
  • Increase −£16.5M
[3] (2023)
Number of employees
127[3] (2023)
Websitewhat3words.com

What3words (stylized as what3words) is a proprietary geocode system designed to identify any location on the surface of Earth with a resolution of about 3 metres (9.8 ft). It is owned by What3words Limited, based in London, England. The system encodes geographic coordinates into three permanently fixed dictionary words. For example, the front door of 10 Downing Street in London is identified by ///slurs.this.shark.[4]

What3words differs from most location encoding systems in that it uses words rather than strings of numbers or letters, and the pattern of this mapping is not obvious; the algorithm mapping locations to words is copyrighted.[5]

What3words has been subject to a number of criticisms both for its closed source code[6] and the significant risk of ambiguity and confusion in its three word addresses.[7] This has resulted in some to advise against the use of What3words in safety critical applications.[8][9]

The company has a website, apps for iOS and Android, and an API for bidirectional conversion between What3words addresses and latitude–longitude coordinates.

  1. ^ "Incorporation". Companies House. 5 March 2013. Retrieved 4 July 2024.
  2. ^ "What3words Limited overview - Find and update company information - GOV.UK". Companies House. 5 March 2013. Retrieved 4 July 2024.
  3. ^ a b c Cite error: The named reference ch2023report was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Leatherdale, Duncan (15 August 2019). "What3words: The app that can save your life". BBC News. Retrieved 31 January 2021.
  5. ^ Whittaker, Zack (30 April 2021). "What3Words sent a legal threat to a security researcher for sharing an open-source alternative". TechCrunch. Retrieved 11 November 2021.
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference bbc2019 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference arthurplos was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference Tierney was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference Times20191226 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).