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Farewell, Google Maps

inderapotheke.de

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Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#11

Post by ocdtrekkie »

izacus wrote: post #5
wyldfire wrote: post #3

> OpenStreetMap is not supposed to be directly used by commercial sites. Not if I understand their terms correctly [1] [2]. Maybe there's a distinction between the terms of the map data itself and the software published to interact with it? [1] https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright [2] https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/summary/

IIRC that's for the openstreetmap.org site, which wasn't built to answer queries from hundreds of commercial apps (like Maps API is). You're supposed to copy and deploy the dataset on your own servers so you don't burn bandwidth of the OSM project.

There's some other options too for people who want to use OSM data, but avoid deploying it themselves. One of the ones I discovered is that MapQuest (which it doesn't look like they considered) offers OSM data and APIs as an option alongside the MapQuest proprietary data and APIs: https://developer.mapquest.com/documentation/open/

And there's several other places that offer this as well. So the advantage of building on OSM data and APIs potentially is that you could switch providers without losing API compatibility or having the data available change out from under you.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#12

Post by Moru »

equasar wrote: post #4
Mariehane wrote: post #2

I wonder if this price hike has anything to do with the EU antitrust fine Google received recently.

I'm pretty is a percent of the reason why they decided this absurd price increase.

Thats ok, there are plenty of other ways to get a free map and analytics on your homepage. And the added benefit of not handing your users data over to google. Planned for first thing after the vacation.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#14

Post by ericd »

abduhl wrote: post #10

Is this price increase imposed on X-sharing outfits like Uber/Lyft/Lime/Bird/etc.?

Users at that scale typically have an enterprise plan which is handled differently (you have an account manager rather than using Google's API console billing), and pricing is totally different.

It's been a while since I had a GMaps enterprise plan, though, so I'm not sure if they're bumping the pricing on that side. At the time, the pricing was closer to the new prices they're rolling out than they were to the old API console billing prices.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#15

Post by joeblau »

abduhl wrote: post #10

Is this price increase imposed on X-sharing outfits like Uber/Lyft/Lime/Bird/etc.?

It's imposed on every commercial user of their API which is why a lot of companies are also leaving Google Maps. I talked about this in another post, but Apple[1], Tesla[2], and Uber[3] are all getting off of Google Maps. It seems that Google raised prices to the point where it's actually cheaper to just go and build your own maps or find a lower cost alternative.

[1] - https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/29/apple-is-rebuilding-maps-f...

[2] - https://electrek.co/2017/07/03/tesla-map-navigation-open-sou...

[3] - https://www.uber.com/newsroom/mapping-ubers-future/

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#16

Post by wwweston »

ericd wrote: post #7

"Sudden change of policy by Google, which is directed specifically at startups (as smaller web sites should largely remain below even the new lower thresholds), is surely an unpleasant surprise for us and does not create much trust in Google as a vendor. In the future we would therefore keep our distance from Google Cloud and avoid deep integration with any Google services on which it can pull a similar trick. For ex…

While I've experienced the frustration of having a formerly free service develop paid tiers (and policies that put me in those tiers), of all the changes a software service can make, this is the one that frustrates me the least, or at any rate less than:

* shutting down the service entirely because the user base never grew into customers who actually valued the service

* changing your terms of service to forbid an activity that was previously allowed, because someone discovered a use that messed up the price points and the service owners would rather forbid that than offer a reasonable price point allowing it

* moving to opaquely metered service potentially with apparently arbitrary levels of financial exposure to the client

A big price bump with a few months notice is painful (and I'm glad it's bringing competition), but it tells me they're thinking seriously about how to sustain/develop the product and lets both them and me explore the real value of the service.

When it comes to Google, I'm more worried that they might just arbitrarily mothball something on a management roadmap whim.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#19

Post by b212 »

There's a small Polish startup that helps people find nearest pharmacies with given drugs.

They did pretty nice analysis and found out their whole infrastructure costs $1300 a month and they would have to pay additional $5000 for Google Maps alone (right now GM costs them nothing).

Looks like GM will be ~10x more expensive to them than Mapbox or MapTiler, here's the original article (in Polish) translated by Google (sic!):

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pl&tl=en&js=y&prev...

Looks like many folks who leeched on GM's free plan will move to alternatives so maybe this dick move will turn around and became actually a good thing, would love to see more competition in the area and right now Google Maps is years ahead of competition: https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#20

Post by zackmorris »

ericd wrote: post #7

"Sudden change of policy by Google, which is directed specifically at startups (as smaller web sites should largely remain below even the new lower thresholds), is surely an unpleasant surprise for us and does not create much trust in Google as a vendor. In the future we would therefore keep our distance from Google Cloud and avoid deep integration with any Google services on which it can pull a similar trick. For ex…

Is there something like Amazon or Google shopping with a list of prices for all products through time? Kind of like the Wayback Machine (archive.org) but for products.

Maybe having a searchable historical database of everything imaginable and their prices would keep companies honest and prevent price gouging.

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