Absolutely insane.... 750k requests to 30k? I know its a business but wow. Just wow.
Farewell, Google Maps
151–160 of 545 posts
Re: Farewell, Google Maps
#152We switched from Google Maps to OpenMapTiles for the same reason. Running OpenMapTiles via Docker was pretty easy. We bought a license for the Tiles (Europe) and it was a one time fee only.
Interesting, you had to purchase a license for the tiles? I thought that OpenMapTiles were "open".
The data is open and can be downloaded from the donation-run OpenStreetMap Foundation, and as long as you provide credits you are free to do anything with the data (commercial or otherwise), but if someone makes a custom style and creates tiles (images) from them, then those images are copyrighted.
Re: Farewell, Google Maps
#153Check out TallyGo.com - SDK works like magic for all things mapping, including turn by turn...way easier to implement than mapbox and way better traffic, road network and turn by turn...cheaper too imho
Re: Farewell, Google Maps
#154Apple's web mapping free tier is huge: Apple 250K map views / *day* Mapbox 50K map views / month Google ($200 credit buys you) 28k dynamic map views / month Once it comes out of beta, I'm guessing their pricing will be pretty aggressive too.
And for OpenStreetMap, the cost might be negligible depending on how often you want updates and how large an area you want to cover: for a small area, you can generate tiles once a year or so and just have static hosting serve them up.
According to another comment in this thread who hosts a tile server him/herself on DigitalOcean, that costs about $40. Doesn't seem terrible even for a startup, either.
Re: Farewell, Google Maps
#155"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…
> In the case of maps, there weren't many great alternatives for a long time, due to Google sucking all the oxygen/profit potential out of the field with their excellent free offerings. There was a related discussion[0] on HN a few weeks ago that I found enlightening. Commentator ucaetano's phrasing of the strategy was "create a desert of profitability around you". The discussion of moats vs deserts found here [1] is…
Almost every conversation I've had with someone working at a startup in this city inevitably turns to the "so, are you worried Google will simply start offering your service for free?"
I remember like 3 or 4 years ago having this conversation at a hackathon with a bunch of "Machine Learning" / "Sentiment Analysis" APIs present... right as google started offering both for free on their cloud platform.
Re: Farewell, Google Maps
#156It seems remarkably naive to assume a high quality business that is obviously expensive to run would remain free.
Re: Farewell, Google Maps
#157I think the GDPR and EU fine is going to trigger Google - and perhaps other large American tech companies - to actually start charging for services, now that our personal data cannot be so easily sold. Google has been enjoying huge profits, so is probably setting the pricing on those services at the level required to maintain those profits. I think what we will see in the maps arena is multiple-country specific maps…
I'm just as in favor of GDPR as you, but I shall reserve my cheers for when the first actual GPDR fines are handed out. For now, I'm mostly seeing annoyed SMEs on one side who go to ridiculous lengths to be compliant in the face of missing precedents. And on the other side, big internet corps are implementing joke consent pages with tons of dark patterns that clearly go against the spirit of the regulation. I think t…
I'm not really a fan of GDPR actually. I think advertising has its place, and the more targeted it is, the better the results for everyone. The worst thing that people can point to that this kind of advertising has caused is fake news on Facebook, which is more of a problem with America's campaign financing (non)restrictions than anything (and probably the fact that the candidate who used it was quite anti-establishment).
What the internet is missing though is an alternate funding mechanism. When I visit a site I indirectly give the owner something like $0.002 (0.2 cents) worth of bucks from advertisers who show things to me. Why can't I just pay the website that as a microtransaction directly? Transaction fees would eat it all - but aggregated enough, and perhaps as part of a $10/month 'internet content subscription', it could work in the way that Spotify does.
Re: Farewell, Google Maps
#158Wonder if a company like Garmin will be jumping into the market given Google's behavior.
I wonder when we realize that, whoever the current big guy is, having a single company be the big guy means they can pull this kind of crap. There are two ways to avoid this: have multiple good options at any given time (and make it easy to switch), or have a non-commercial entity be the main source of data. My inner hacker wants the latter, but I guess either would be okay.
Re: Farewell, Google Maps
#159This is bad design on the OP's part.
I hail from hardware where, for instance, Apple chooses 3 providers for it's SSDs (SanDisk, Samsung, Intel, ...) to shield itself from price gouging, supply issues with any single party, business concerns, etc..
However, I routinely see entire companies based on single providers despite choice existing in the marketplace. The OP should have designed their service around multiple mapping providers from the get go, if a serious business relied on mapping
Re: Farewell, Google Maps
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't Uber and Amazon do that already?
i think uber at least (not that i want to defend anything they do) is different, because they don’t have low rates to smother their competition; they have low introductory rates to attract riders and drivers to the service unsure if that’s also predatory pricing? seems different to me
> they don’t have low rates to smother their competition
Whether their competition is Lyft, Taxis, or public transportation, their subsidized pricing is a big factor to their customers.