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Farewell, Google Maps

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Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#331

Post by AmericanChopper »

cornholio wrote: post #298
DoreenMichele wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that's cool for you. But you are a relative newcomer here, at least your handle is (yes, pot, meet kettle -- but I've been here 9 years and quite a few people know that) and reputation, merit of the info, etc matters to quite a lot of the members here. It matters in part because truth matters to a lot of people here. Actual reality matters to a lot of people here. It's a bunch of pedants. And if you want to mak…

> bunch of pedants. > mods will ban you for trolling. This culture, while nice, cannot scale. At some point or another, an online community becomes an image of the wider social community it serves, regardless of the intentions of the founders or ephemeral royalty. Just like Facebook or Reddit (d)evolved, HN cannot forever maintain a 70s hacker ethos and mannerisms. At some point or another the current reality of toda…

>HN cannot forever maintain a 70s hacker ethos and mannerisms

HN doesn’t currently have any traditional hacker ethos. The points of view accepted on HN are all quite homogenous and mainstream.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#332

Post by kwhitefoot »

jseliger wrote: post #142
Zaskoda wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only came to the comments to upvote whoever mentioned OpenStreetMaps. It needs our love.

I only came to the comments to upvote whoever mentioned OpenStreetMaps. It needs our love. This is the platform Maps.me is based on, correct? I ask because I downloaded Maps.me the other day, after reading HN, and have found it to be missing most businesses that I've attempted to search for. In addition, there seems to be no obvious way to suggest missing destinations. I too want Google/Apple maps alternatives to suc…

You can add things to OSM using the Maps Android app; open the hamburger menu, choose "Add a place to the map".

Maps is based on Maps.me.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#333

Post by emn13 »

callalex wrote: post #217
tomnipotent wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you to read the article which mentions all the competitors that are available?

The wording was a bit confusing, but I think the GP meant that Google _thinks_ they have no competition so can get away with sudden price gouging.

Since API's aren't standardized and conversion from one product to another likely requires development work and probably impacts your usage in some way even then - the barriers to switching are high enough that the availability of alternative maps still doesn't represent a whole lot of competition.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#334

Post by [deleted] »

draw_down wrote: post #42
wwweston wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ac…

Jacking up the price so far that it becomes prohibitive to actually use, on short notice, isn't much different from shutting it down, is it? In both cases you suddenly can't use the service anymore.

[deleted]

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#335

Post by dantheman0207 »

jhall1468 wrote: post #308
google_censors wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 complai…

Bing Streetside and OpenStreetCam are a thing. They just aren't very good. There's a huge up-front investment for street view images that other companies didn't want to take. Microsoft invested in it, released a product and the product wasn't as good as the market leader. That's not predatory.

Other companies didn’t want to make that huge investment BECAUSE of Google. Google offered the same service for free, which meant they had no recourse for recouping that investment. Now that has changed, and the lack of standing competitors is a direct result of that history.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#336

Post by celdon25 »

ajross wrote: post #111
tobltobs wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thought the same, there are not many use cases which will be still profitable after this price increase.

Counterpoint: if these startups need a giant subsidized mapping product for free or else they aren't profitable, they weren't ever profitable . I mean, there's a real cry-me-a-river aspect here. No one has a Google-granted fundamental right to mapping. It's a free product Google released to drive traffic to their own offerings, and which they happen to make available for free for a lot of purposes. As it turns out, y…

Here we go again with the "No subscription fees means you have the right to like what we give you" argument. Haven't we beaten the "nothing is actually free" horse into the ground by now? There is the matter of the vast amounts of data Google collects from people, and the other intangible costs you incur from the lack of alternative products due to the high barrier to entry (hard to compete with 'free'), and of course the risks that come with the lack of incentive on the vendor's part to maintain good will with the end user (this thread is case in point).

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#337

Post by rmc »

rurban wrote: post #283
apatters wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pricing change is understandably very frustrating for users of Google Maps who are affected, but it seems like a big win to me for everyone in the mapping market. Google is trading away a monopoly position (and related regulatory risk) in exchange for increased revenue so it's a win for them. It's a win for other mappers because now they can compete on price. It's a win for users because they are getting more cho…

But the other mapping services will very soon adjust their prices also. It makes no sense to be 10x cheaper than Google when 2x cheaper does the same. I still have to understand openstreetmap mapping solutions. It's named open, not free, so I guess providing your own server with osm data would work. Only with FreeStreetMap the data would be infected also.

> I still have to understand openstreetmap mapping solutions. It's named open, not free, so I guess providing your own server with osm data would work. Only with FreeStreetMap the data would be infected also.

I'm not sure what you mean with "free"/"open". The OSM licence has a share-alike part if you merge your own map data with OSM data. If you just have a map and put points on it, it'd be fine.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#338

Post by arsenico »

ajross wrote: post #111
tobltobs wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thought the same, there are not many use cases which will be still profitable after this price increase.

Counterpoint: if these startups need a giant subsidized mapping product for free or else they aren't profitable, they weren't ever profitable . I mean, there's a real cry-me-a-river aspect here. No one has a Google-granted fundamental right to mapping. It's a free product Google released to drive traffic to their own offerings, and which they happen to make available for free for a lot of purposes. As it turns out, y…

It is not about free. It is about being more expensive than before. We live in the economy, where small companies operate at such a thin margin (even if they're profitable), that such an increase in cost often kills any hope for profitability, especially with the economies of scale. Would you prefer to fire one developer from the team, or stop using Google Maps?

I am not saying that mapping should be free, but such price bumps should be communicated better to allow paying customers prepare for changes and alternative scenarios.

And again, just another reminder, that whenever choosing a provider for anything related to your core business - think of an exit plan!

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#339

Post by rmc »

jseliger wrote: post #142
Zaskoda wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only came to the comments to upvote whoever mentioned OpenStreetMaps. It needs our love.

I only came to the comments to upvote whoever mentioned OpenStreetMaps. It needs our love. This is the platform Maps.me is based on, correct? I ask because I downloaded Maps.me the other day, after reading HN, and have found it to be missing most businesses that I've attempted to search for. In addition, there seems to be no obvious way to suggest missing destinations. I too want Google/Apple maps alternatives to suc…

> In addition, there seems to be no obvious way to suggest missing destinations.

That's strange. I just checked Maps.me on Android, and if you open the hamburger menu there's an "add a place to the map" option.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#340

Post by Jerry2 »

dmortin wrote: post #289
joshe wrote: post #62

Apple'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.

Doesn't Apple's map require a developer account which costs money? I haven't used them, but I seem to remember you have to pay to develop using Apple products.

>Doesn't Apple's map require a developer account which costs money?

$100 seems like a bargain compared to those other options.

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