Amazon Location Service • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon Location Service

#11

Post by joshstrange » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

geuis wrote: post #3

Pricing here: https://aws.amazon.com/location/pricing/ Scroll down to see it. No idea why Amazon always hides their service pricing on completely different pages.

Their "free-tier" drives me nuts. It's always extremely convoluted and unless something has changed it's more of a 1-time "trial" for a period of time rather than a "tier" like GCP. Also their "free-tier" lasts different periods of time for different products. Like EC2 is 1 year but this is 3 months.

A baseline "free usage" everyone always gets and then if you go over, you pay, would be so much easier to understand. I understand it's not in Amazon's financial interests to make such a change but it always leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.

Re: Amazon Location Service

#12

Post by klohto » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 5:24 PM UTC

joshstrange wrote: post #11

geuis wrote: post #3

Pricing here: https://aws.amazon.com/location/pricing/ Scroll down to see it. No idea why Amazon always hides their service pricing on completely different pages.

Their "free-tier" drives me nuts. It's always extremely convoluted and unless something has changed it's more of a 1-time "trial" for a period of time rather than a "tier" like GCP. Also their "free-tier" lasts different periods of time for different products. Like EC2 is 1 year but this is 3 months. A baseline "free usage" everyone always gets and then if you go over, you pay, would be so much easier to understand.…

There is a permanent free usage limit though. For example Lambda has it. But agreed that they could differentiate between the different free tiers.

Re: Amazon Location Service

#13

Post by evangow » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 5:24 PM UTC

Zaheer wrote: post #10

This is great but I really hope they get into the more popular uses like IP to location, autocomplete, etc APIs. There’s tons of small providers and some big ones out there that do this but it seems like an easy add for Amazon to do.

You can do IP to location if you deploy a Lamda@Edge and get the cloudfront headers

https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2020/07/cloudfron...

Re: Amazon Location Service

#14

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 5:25 PM UTC

ilyas121 wrote: post #5

Can I get satellite images? Only thing holding me back from switching completely from GCP to AWS for a couple projects.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon Location Service

#15

Post by jack_riminton » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 5:25 PM UTC

Always great to have an alternative to Google but I'd encourage anyone to have a look at Leaflet.js which is a great free alternative and doesn't take much JS knowledge to get up and running

Edited to say: and of course it runs on OpenStreetMaps

Re: Amazon Location Service

#16

Post by joshstrange » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 5:27 PM UTC

klohto wrote: post #12

joshstrange wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their "free-tier" drives me nuts. It's always extremely convoluted and unless something has changed it's more of a 1-time "trial" for a period of time rather than a "tier" like GCP. Also their "free-tier" lasts different periods of time for different products. Like EC2 is 1 year but this is 3 months. A baseline "free usage" everyone always gets and then if you go over, you pay, would be so much easier to understand.…

There is a permanent free usage limit though. For example Lambda has it. But agreed that they could differentiate between the different free tiers.

Ack! Ugh see this is what I’m talking about. I use Lambda for some side projects but I forgot about this because all the different products have such different types of billing and free tiers. I just wish it wasn’t so confusing. Thank you for correcting my mistake!

Re: Amazon Location Service

#17

Post by cldellow » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 5:30 PM UTC

jack_riminton wrote: post #15

Always great to have an alternative to Google but I'd encourage anyone to have a look at Leaflet.js which is a great free alternative and doesn't take much JS knowledge to get up and running Edited to say: and of course it runs on OpenStreetMaps

Leaflet.js is just the client piece. You still need a tile server, which is one of the commercial services being offered here.

While you _can_ use the OSM's tile servers, they offer no guarantees: https://operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/tiles/

They also have ongoing operational problems/expenses from people using their tile servers, and it's possible that they will one day break you in order to keep their own site functioning.

Re: Amazon Location Service

#18

Post by bfgoodrich » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 5:33 PM UTC

A number of the largest vendors are hanging off of OpenStreetMaps data now, but none of them are doing anything to help with the fundamental data.

Offer canonical sources mapping services, Amazon. Get municipalities maintaining their own roads in a system that automatically feeds into OSM. Get them propagating their construction notices, speed limit changes, addressing, etc, again into an OSM integration.

Re: Amazon Location Service

#19

Post by mchusma » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

object_Object wrote: post #2

What OSS has AWS cannibalised and stuck an API on to put this out? Doesn't seem obvious from the post.

Openstreetmap is behind apple maps, facebook maps, and much of mapbox, if I understand it right.

Re: Amazon Location Service

#20

Post by juliansimioni » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 5:36 PM UTC

Zaheer wrote: post #10

This is great but I really hope they get into the more popular uses like IP to location, autocomplete, etc APIs. There’s tons of small providers and some big ones out there that do this but it seems like an easy add for Amazon to do.

Speaking as co-founder of Geocode Earth(https://geocode.earth) where we do provide autocomplete geocoding, it's a much, _much_ harder problem than regular geocoding (not that any geocoding is exactly...easy).

For one, the latency requirements are much more strict. People type fast and if results don't come in within about 100ms or so, the interface doesn't feel responsive. We spend a ton of time ensuring our servers are as fast as possible. There's always more work to do here, since obviously network latency matters, so where your servers are matters too.

Second, the queries themselves are much harder. If someone has typed "India", did they want the country? Or have they not yet finished typing Indiana? The answer probably depends on their location, which may not always be available. That's a simple example, obviously there are much more subtle queries that don't always have as clear an answer.

Anyways, we enjoy the challenge of autocomplete and hope to continue to do a better and better job, even after Amazon inevitably releases their own :)