Farewell, Google Maps • Hacker News Board

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#371

Post by mastef » Fri, Jul 20, 2018, 8:57 AM UTC

dmortin wrote: post #366

mastef wrote: post #363

The weird part is that a Firebase plan for one of my side-projects suddenly auto-updated to the paid "Firebase Blaze". The email notification stated : "Your project was upgraded due to activity in Google Cloud" "A user has set a new billing account for your project in the Google Cloud Platform console. This initiated billing for your project, resulting in an upgrade to your project's Firebase plan." Issue with that i…

AFAIK people who did not set up billing get this transition account so their access is not cut off completely. https://groups.google.com/forum/?#!topic/firebase-talk/jWRCd...

It seems it was an unintended consequence of the Google Maps change and many users were affected and confused by it [1]. If you add a Billing account to a cloud project, Firebase will automatically upgrade you to Blaze. Since Google Maps added a billing account automatically to your Google Cloud account, that auto-upgraded your Firebase plan.

The response from the Firebase team [2] was that no additional charges would occur based on this incident, and they've opened an incident report [3] in their dashboard.

- [1] StackOverflow Thread with users facing similar confusion https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51373671/project-upgrade...

- [2] Official Firebase response https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en-US#!topic/firebase-ta...

- [3] Firebase incident report for issue "Firebase Users who use Maps API get auto-upgraded to Blaze" https://status.firebase.google.com/incident/Console/18016

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#372

Post by brobdingnagians » Fri, Jul 20, 2018, 9:06 AM UTC

When I looked into mapping solutions for my company, I realized pretty quickly that MapQuest had a much more transparent and easy to negotiate process than Google maps. It was apparent that Google's API, etc. was more advanced, but we really didn't need that (just retrieving an image of directions in one small sub-section of our site), so I'm glad I went with MapQuest-- which is more than adequate for our purposes and has had price DECREASES instead of increases during our time with them. I think there is something to say for going for an underdog, where they are less likely to mess you over, partly because they can't afford to do that.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#373

Post by dandare » Fri, Jul 20, 2018, 9:06 AM UTC

I used to occasionally contribute to Google Maps with edits, images etc. That will no longer be the case. I understand it will not have almost any impact on Google, but the same is true for instance for elections, yet I make the trip to voting urn almost every year.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#374

Post by brobdingnagians » Fri, Jul 20, 2018, 9:08 AM UTC

Groxx wrote: post #30

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

MapQuest seems like it might be 6x more expensive than the others listed in the post, if "transactions" are the same concept: https://developer.mapquest.com/plans ($100 for 30,000 transactions) (transactions aren't defined anywhere I can easily find tho, so it's possible this isn't correct. but I don't really mind prematurely concluding that they're significantly more expensive if they don't clearly describe their pr…

We just use them on the free tier as well; we used to pay, but I think they upped their free tier a bit and sent us an email saying we didn't have to pay anymore (if I recall correctly). Their API was easy to integrate; haven't had to research mapping companies much recently, so not sure who I would pick now based on more data.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#375

Post by salvar » Fri, Jul 20, 2018, 9:16 AM UTC

jhall1468 wrote: post #309

foobarbazetc wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Name one billion dollar business that is a success today when 80% of its product is an API call to an externally owned service? I get the frustration and pain with this, but let's be honest, if your business was totally reliant on Google Maps it probably wasn't a great business to begin with. Way too many eggs in a basket you don't own.

I a billion dollar business the only definition of a successful one?

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#376

Post by scarejunba » Fri, Jul 20, 2018, 9:17 AM UTC

majewsky wrote: post #233

beerlord wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 S…

If you're German, then the Snowden documents show that your government is participating in domestic surveillance that it cooperates with Five Eyes on. This is a few orders of magnitude more invasive than what advertisers do.

The Stasi are fresh in no one's minds or you would eliminate this surveillance.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#377

Post by scarejunba » Fri, Jul 20, 2018, 9:18 AM UTC

bhhaskin wrote: post #171

bflesch wrote: post #58

I think it is positive that google finally reaches a sane price point with maps. As the comparison in the blog post shows, the whole market of map providers looked at what gmaps is charging and kind of went along with a price in the same category. The higher price allows them to actually get paid for the value they provide to various startups, which - as they pointed out in the blog post - would not exist without the…

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…

What was the competition that was run out of business?

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#378

Post by Scarblac » Fri, Jul 20, 2018, 9:19 AM UTC

ucaetano wrote: post #203

komali2 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Which most likely meant the startup was a feature or a product, not a company with a viable business model.

If it wasn't a viable business model, Google wouldn't move into the space. It's just that they first use their infinite pocket money to kill off all the competition, then switch to making money.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#379

Post by anticensor » Fri, Jul 20, 2018, 9:22 AM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #219

Why not host you own OSM data for Poland and Germany? Just reduce the detail level and unneeded layers and deliver vector tiles. This way you are the master of your own destiny and bear (most) of the true cost of your service without any middlemen to charge usurious tolls. Then just make an annual token donation to OSM for their data services and you are done.

OSM does not have layers, did you mean _eliminating unneeded keys_?

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#380

Post by ToBeThrownAway » Fri, Jul 20, 2018, 9:25 AM UTC

Throw Away account.

The pricing tiers in this article do not include the additional levels of volume discounts which are available if your usage is high. You need to contact a partner or the google sales team to get details of those additional tiers.

The small fry like these kind of people are not google's real customers - the real customers were already paying to use the APIs before these changes happened.

The free limits before were hugely generous. There is a cost involved in offering the free service. If you weren't paying for it, then google was losing money. If you stop using google for free now because of this, then they actually save money and can now dedicate those resources to supporting actual paying customers for which there are many. Sure individual small users are a drop in the ocean, but multiply that up by many thousands and thousands...

Mapping is commoditized. There are many free and paid-for competitors as the article states. If you want the extra value that google offers and chose to stick with using them, then you need to pay for it now. I dont think that is unreasonable. If you dont want to pay for the service and continue getting something valuable for nothing, then go and leech MapBox/Here/someone else's free limits instead. See how long a small company without google's resources can support thousands of startups hammering their services & infrastructure without any revenue to pay for it.

Good luck.