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Farewell, Google Maps

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Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#231

Post by [deleted] »

magicalist wrote: post #179
bhhaskin wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is the problem. When Google first launched Maps it was free and they ran all of the other competition out of business. Now that all their competition are dead they want to charge for it. If that doesn't scream antitrust I don't know what else does. Google has grown maps using pretty shady tactics. Their data is only so good due to mining data from all the Android users and I bet Street View has a lot of governme…

> When Google first launched Maps it was free and they ran all of the other competition out of business. Now that all their competition are dead they want to charge for it. Were there any significant competing maps APIs for the web in 2005? There may have been (and you seem so certain I'm sure you could name them all :P), but it's crazy to claim that there aren't far more competitors in the last 5 years than there we…

[deleted]

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#232

Post by spalt »

PerfectElement wrote: post #213

Does anyone know of a good alternative to Google Places Autocomplete API? Our app makes 25k requests per day. They had a free 150k limit per day, but now it seems like we are going from $0 to $1,800 per month, and this is not a core feature of our app. I wouldn't mind paying a couple hundred dollars for it, but this price is almost what we pay for our whole infrastructure. The worst part is that we didn't get any not…

Check out Azure Maps: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/azure-maps/ I believe they have an autocomplete component....

I was investigating the Google Traffic API for an app I was working on just as they were making this change. They went from something like 10,000 free requests a day (which would have been plenty for my purposes) to 0 free requests a day. "Don't be evil" my ass. Anyway, the Azure Maps (which uses TomTom data) is much more generous.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#233

Post by majewsky »

beerlord wrote: post #157
majewsky wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-establishm…

> The worst thing that people can point to that this kind of advertising has caused is fake news on Facebook

The worst thing about targeted ads is that we're building an insane surveillance infrastructure that the government is already eager to tap into, and will be even more eager if one of our governments devolves into dictatorship.

I'm from East Germany; and while I'm too young to have experienced it myself, the Stasi is still fresh in our minds. What we build today in the name of improved advertisement would have brought tears to Mielke's eyes.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#234

Post by parrellel »

asfasgasg wrote: post #207
emodendroket wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essentially the Google Reader effect, right? Where killing their offering basically killed the entire medium.

You've got the causality reversed here. The medium was dying, so the Reader product was killed.

You mean Google+ needed promotion so the Reader product was killed.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#235

Post by stirlo »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #199
snarf21 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a different reason for charging for StreetView. The need to make their money back and quick. Self driving cars will have cameras that will give reasonable results for a lot of use cases (maybe not 360 but who cares). It is also a potential combo monetization strategy for the autonomous vendor.

The standard license prohibits use in autonomous vehicles. Para 2.e https://maps.google.com/help/terms_maps.html

The issue isn't what google allows/prohibits, its that any new autonomous vehicle company could quickly amass a similar data set to street view and nullify googles 10 plus year investment driving non autonomous cars around to capture street view images.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#236

Post by google_censors »

kirchhoff wrote: post #45

It's as much as a 28x increase in price. For Street View imagery, the cost has gone from $0.5 per 1000 views to $14 / 1000. Unlike with maps, Street View lacks a real alternative. I'm seeing my own costs, for a site which I run on my own, rise from $1,500 / month to around $30,000 / month. Their rationale is essentially that they did not want commercial users abusing their free tier. Before this change, they had been…

Please contact the US Department of Justice and let them know about how the price increase is affecting you in regards to Street View. They seemed to buy into my reasoning that Google has effectively made sure that they won't have any Street View competition by artificially keeping prices low for years. The more people that complain, the sooner the DOJ will probably take action. For European users I recommend complaining to your regulators as well, especially using Street View as your main complaint since there's no real alternatives.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#237

Post by emodendroket »

parrellel wrote: post #234
asfasgasg wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got the causality reversed here. The medium was dying, so the Reader product was killed.

You mean Google+ needed promotion so the Reader product was killed.

In the first place they'd rather you used something other than RSS so they can inject promoted content into it.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#238

Post by caf »

komali2 wrote: post #163
anarazel wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I find it helpful. Stating the level of confidence, and that's what IANAL is to some degree, is helpful in judging a statement.

Warning: completely unrelated to thread topic. Poor grandparent got nuked in the votes, but I actually think this is an interesting discussion. It ties to my thoughts about politeness and behavior on the internet, which ties to my thoughts about the same IRL. Dale Carnegie, "How to Win Friends" type stuff. Is it effective to "hedge" your arguments/posts/words with a "now I might be wrong" / "you may know more about t…

Linus uses hedging language quite a bit actually, eg. http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1807.0/01744.html

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#239

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

foobarbazetc wrote: post #173
bflesch wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you get into trouble with your unit economics given such a raise, then you really need to think about your business model. How much value is your business really creating ON TOP of the maps? I don't want to be snarky, but I think many businesses don't think enough about this issue of value creation.

Name one business that can absorb a 20x increase in a component cost.

Apple.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#240

Post by nickodell »

supernova87a wrote: post #43
RestlessMind wrote: post #21

> Importantly, prices are the same from US to the Africa, despite the fact that revenue generation is vastly different in most developed countries compared to the others. This can be understood in two ways: 1. Cost of serving is the same from US to Africa (datacenters, network bandwidth, engineering etc), so prices are same 2. If #1 results in less adoption from developing countries, it is okay because they are not t…

Yeah, if Google had differential pricing for something that costs them the same to produce, I'm sure you would soon find innovative middlemen who make it their business to source the Maps from lower cost priced countries to higher ones. Just like travel agents or passengers find ways to take cheaper flights from countries or city pairs that airlines price differently to help capture more market, even though it doesn'…

That would be true if the pricing were based on the business's location, but not if the pricing were based on the map's location.

If you say that you're in Khartoum when you're actually in New York, you won't get a very useful map back.

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