From what I can gather the Australian switch to paywall took a long time because the founders of Nearmap strongly believed in the free for personal use + licenses to organisations model. I remember back in 2010 they forecasted something like $60m in annual revenues based on licensing at fixed prices to different levels of government, e.g. $1m/year per federal department.
Without any insider information my guess is that the then new CEO (Crowther) had a different vision for Nearmap but the founders of Nearmap (Nixon, Cope) disagreed.
Throughout 2012 the founders left and there was significant turnover in staff, as well as the relocation to Sydney, and in December 2012 Nearmap switched to the pay only model we have today.
Throughout 2013 and continuing today they've been running pricing & feature experiments. They seem to be making decisions based on data which gives me faith in Crowther.
It was clear (after 2.5 years) that the original big license model didn't work and realistically no one can say what will work so it's important that management is willing to be flexible rather than get too attached to their gut feel.
Thus as far as replicating the model to the US -- I simply hope that they stick to this method of trying things out and adjusting as appropriate. There's no need to rigidly replicate Australian products into the US or any other markets.
