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Serverless maps at 1/700 the cost of Google Maps API

protomaps.com

21–30 of 118 posts

Re: Serverless maps at 1/700 the cost of Google Maps API

#22
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here - the catch is that the data you store and serve is usually not as rich and complete as Google's, of course. The solution as described in the post is for serving tile archives, and where you get the tile archive is up to you - I have a commercial offering (and am working on an open source one too), and there's various other FOSS projects for tile creation.

PMTiles looks excellent, I think the range request idea will go far. Just wanted to let you know that the "Live Example Page" link on the page seems to 404.

Thanks, should be fixed now!

Re: Serverless maps at 1/700 the cost of Google Maps API

#23
Can someone give a better description of how this initiative relates to OpenStreetMaps? The website says that the "tile dataset [is] based on OpenStreetMap data" - so, what's the added value in the commercial tier? And - how, if at all, does this initiative contribute back to OSM as a project?

Re: Serverless maps at 1/700 the cost of Google Maps API

#24

Google Map 10X their price on a single price change. Never trust Google Cloud or run any production servers with them. They have zero empathy for you. Just today, we got screwed by Google Cloud (as a 4 yrs customer) when they abruptly shutdown our production servers just because we didn't fill up a form on-time. My story: https://twitter.com/Ryan_Liao/status/1634103410525077504 (happens today) [Link Updated]

The story looks like deleted..

Re: Serverless maps at 1/700 the cost of Google Maps API

#26
post #24

Google Map 10X their price on a single price change. Never trust Google Cloud or run any production servers with them. They have zero empathy for you. Just today, we got screwed by Google Cloud (as a 4 yrs customer) when they abruptly shutdown our production servers just because we didn't fill up a form on-time. My story: https://twitter.com/Ryan_Liao/status/1634103410525077504 (happens today) [Link Updated]

The story looks like deleted..

Thanks! Link updated to my own tweet. I don't know why my post got removed. It's no diff from previous gcloud horror stories.

Re: Serverless maps at 1/700 the cost of Google Maps API

#27

The real meat of this story: > A web application with 50,000 map loads using the Google Maps API will cost $350 per month. > A similar amount of traffic running through a Protomaps CDN install on Cloudflare, with an average of 20 tiles per session, costs fifty cents in Cloudflare Workers request fees. $350 versus $0.50! Who's going to be the first to build a (maybe Google Maps-compatible?) API on top of this and sell…

> $350 versus $0.50!

It's not as impressive as you make it sound. The real value of the Maps API is in 1) routing and 2) local business details. These are both hard for anybody else to provide, so Google prices them accordingly. The price for the tiles is just an extension to the overall pricing.

Re: Serverless maps at 1/700 the cost of Google Maps API

#28
post #27

The real meat of this story: > A web application with 50,000 map loads using the Google Maps API will cost $350 per month. > A similar amount of traffic running through a Protomaps CDN install on Cloudflare, with an average of 20 tiles per session, costs fifty cents in Cloudflare Workers request fees. $350 versus $0.50! Who's going to be the first to build a (maybe Google Maps-compatible?) API on top of this and sell…

> $350 versus $0.50! It's not as impressive as you make it sound. The real value of the Maps API is in 1) routing and 2) local business details. These are both hard for anybody else to provide, so Google prices them accordingly. The price for the tiles is just an extension to the overall pricing.

Exactly this.

Google Maps isn’t charging for raw bandwidth/storage. They spend massive amounts on R&D to make Maps the most useful and competitive global mapping solution. This comes at a cost, which is completely different than using community-maintained partially-complete OSM maps.

Re: Serverless maps at 1/700 the cost of Google Maps API

#29
post #27

The real meat of this story: > A web application with 50,000 map loads using the Google Maps API will cost $350 per month. > A similar amount of traffic running through a Protomaps CDN install on Cloudflare, with an average of 20 tiles per session, costs fifty cents in Cloudflare Workers request fees. $350 versus $0.50! Who's going to be the first to build a (maybe Google Maps-compatible?) API on top of this and sell…

> $350 versus $0.50! It's not as impressive as you make it sound. The real value of the Maps API is in 1) routing and 2) local business details. These are both hard for anybody else to provide, so Google prices them accordingly. The price for the tiles is just an extension to the overall pricing.

> These are both hard for anybody else to provide, so Google prices them accordingly.

I used to provide data to Google, mark missing postboxes, etc. Then I realised I am just helping them make money.

Also they used to be quick, and got sloppy - 7 years ago my submission would get processed in 1 week. Recently i submitted nearby postbox, with GPS coordinates and pictures - 6 months, no responce.

This is lile with social networks - the content is what matters, and people give it away for free

Re: Serverless maps at 1/700 the cost of Google Maps API

#30
post #27

The real meat of this story: > A web application with 50,000 map loads using the Google Maps API will cost $350 per month. > A similar amount of traffic running through a Protomaps CDN install on Cloudflare, with an average of 20 tiles per session, costs fifty cents in Cloudflare Workers request fees. $350 versus $0.50! Who's going to be the first to build a (maybe Google Maps-compatible?) API on top of this and sell…

> $350 versus $0.50! It's not as impressive as you make it sound. The real value of the Maps API is in 1) routing and 2) local business details. These are both hard for anybody else to provide, so Google prices them accordingly. The price for the tiles is just an extension to the overall pricing.

Additionally, embedding maps in websites, the thing that most small businesses are wanting to do, is free. The pricing looks to me like it's centered around features that companies might be integrating into their products in order to monetise, which seems fair.
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