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How We reduced our Google Maps API cost

blog.cityflo.com

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Re: How We reduced our Google Maps API cost

#41

Post by ptsneves »

boojing wrote: post #27
lrem wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Placement of the cache definitely matters, even more so if you can take advantage of the more specific data freshness requirements. Disclaimer: I work in Google. But I also worked a bit on effects of cache placement in my PhD.

Why is the fact that you work at Google and have researched caching for your PhD a disclaimer? I fail to see how it denies your previous statement

Because it is argument of authority, that he works with the subject company and has subject matter expertise. Take it however you will

Re: How We reduced our Google Maps API cost

#42

Post by karussell »

If they have their own fleet they can generate their own (historic) traffic data e.g. via Map Matching and use an open source routing engine like GraphHopper with OpenStreetMap data. (disclaimer: I'm one of the developers of GraphHopper.)

It is unclear to me whether their current practice is in harmony with the Google Maps TOS. For some places there are also open traffic data sources: https://github.com/graphhopper/open-traffic-collection

Re: How We reduced our Google Maps API cost

#43

Post by pas »

disillusioned wrote: post #13

Well, that's more clever than a company I did due diligence for. Their strategy was to have a pool of API keys attached to new accounts that would take advantage of the Google Maps API free tier, and monitor its usage. As the free tier usage would run out, the system would roll over to a new API key automatically. Wrote that one up in big red marker in my report...

Is that okay in terms of the ToS? How frequently did someone have to create new accounts?

Won't Google just ban the server's IP?

Re: How We reduced our Google Maps API cost

#44

Post by DeathArrow »

Like in all of Google's "free" apps, the consumer is the product. They gather your data through Waze and Google maps and sell it for nice money to paying customers.

Maybe they can expand on the model a bit and let the paying customers query the API to find out what you were talking while driving. I'm sure that they can find a justification for it.

I was trained to think that companies like Google was all about doing good things while companies like Microsoft were evil.

What happened to "do no evil" policy Google pretended to stick to?

Re: How We reduced our Google Maps API cost

#45

Post by DeathArrow »

disillusioned wrote: post #38
bad_user wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably against their ToS and Google could detect it and ban all of those accounts, or the servers' IPs. You can then keep fooling them by creating new accounts or changing IPs (assuming your usage doesn't have clear patterns they could look at). But such events would be clearly disruptive for the business. Works for a POC, but if your business has actual customers, it's a terrible solution.

This company was shockingly deep into their lifecycle to still be using this approach. And yeah, they'd cycle IPs as needed too. I think the thought was that Google isn't doing a ton of fraud analysis for this particular modality of fraud. Still though...

You don't have many options if you need high accuracy: you have to pay a lot or try to trick Google which might be both immoral and against the law and for sure is tricky, hard to maintain and you can't count on it in the long run.

Let's hope there will be alternatives to Google provided traffic data. For now they seemed to monopolized it by offering it for free while losing money to discourage competition.

Re: How We reduced our Google Maps API cost

#46

Post by Reason077 »

samcheng wrote: post #4
sudhirj wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think real time traffic awareness is exactly what the poster wanted, but yeah it seems like people who don’t need that would be better off using OSS where possible.

Yeah, unfortunately I'm not aware of any open/free sources of real-time traffic data.

MapBox makes their global real-time traffic data available on commercial terms. Not free, but could be a credible alternative to paying Google prices:

https://www.mapbox.com/traffic-data/

Re: How We reduced our Google Maps API cost

#47

Post by superpermutat0r »

If you track the vehicles every day and collect the location data, you can easily augment the Open Source Routing Machine to give you traffic accounted estimates.[0] Combined with some Kalman filters you'd get almost perfect estimates when live.

Of course, this is for a use case where you have similar routes every day, this allows you to really tune the Kalman filters.

0: https://github.com/Project-OSRM/osrm-backend/wiki/Traffic

Re: How We reduced our Google Maps API cost

#48

Post by superpermutat0r »

samcheng wrote: post #2

For what it's worth, I found OpenStreetMaps and the Open Source Routing Machine to be sufficient for our purposes. If you don't want features like real-time traffic awareness, it's worth investigating the open source tooling. It can save a LOT of money.

OSRM can be augmented with your traffic data.

https://github.com/Project-OSRM/osrm-backend/wiki/Traffic

It works quite well.

Re: How We reduced our Google Maps API cost

#49

Post by Craighead »

DeathArrow wrote: post #44

Like in all of Google's "free" apps, the consumer is the product. They gather your data through Waze and Google maps and sell it for nice money to paying customers. Maybe they can expand on the model a bit and let the paying customers query the API to find out what you were talking while driving. I'm sure that they can find a justification for it. I was trained to think that companies like Google was all about doing…

Make sure you look into Windows 10 telemetry first.
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