$4 / $8 cpm? Isn't that a tad high for websites which use gmaps and rely on advertising revenue?
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Google maps usage fees
11–20 of 49 posts
Re: Google maps usage fees
#12Does this mean that Apple will have to pay for all of the iPhone users?
My (not wild) guess is that there was already a contract. Not sure who's paying who, though :)
Re: Google maps usage fees
#13As someone who runs a service where a google map is THE interface, I don't think these rates are all that bad considering how powerful of a tool gmaps is. However, my service doesn't come close to the 25k required before billing comes in to the picture.
I do wonder what the people behind padmapper.com think, which most likely will get charged and has a similar gmap as the service interface.
The really interesting cases will be things like Yelp, where the map is a small feature to the overall service. At 1.5M page views/day that's $1,500 per day...
Re: Google maps usage fees
#14$4 / $8 cpm? Isn't that a tad high for websites which use gmaps and rely on advertising revenue?
Yes, it is just too high. I use a v3 styled map that logs about 15K map loads per day (there is a map on just about every page). That means my total cost per day would be $52, just for maps. I would have to make about $3.5 CPM via adsense to break even on map payments (that doesn't even include my hosting costs and other business expenses).
This change is going to force me to revert back to un-styled maps and just hope my traffic doesn't grow above 25K. If that happens, I'd definitely switch to another map provider.
I think the key thing here is that the google map is a backdrop for my website/app, it is not the main feature. I am happy to pay a reasonable price for my usage, but I am not going to be forced to pay an unreasonably high price for it.
Re: Google maps usage fees
#15As someone who runs a service where a google map is THE interface, I don't think these rates are all that bad considering how powerful of a tool gmaps is. However, my service doesn't come close to the 25k required before billing comes in to the picture. I do wonder what the people behind padmapper.com think, which most likely will get charged and has a similar gmap as the service interface. The really interesting cas…
As the person behind PadMapper (http://www.padmapper.com), this isn't the best news I've gotten this week.
What's yours?
Re: Google maps usage fees
#16Regarding the static maps:
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/staticmaps/in...
Does the following statement still apply?
> Use of the Google Static Maps API is subject to a query limit of 1000 unique (different) image requests per viewer per day. Since this restriction is a quota per viewer, most developers should not need to worry about exceeding their quota. >>
Re: Google maps usage fees
#17Google charging for this is good only in that it guarantees attempts by other parties to create independent solutions that are lower cost.
Sometimes I worry google is too good at things like gmail, maps, etc. and it causes others to not even try to develop competitive services
I was surprised to discover bing maps is far better than google maps at some things, particularly their "bird's eye view" and they find addresses far better in my town where Google will pick the wrong spot.
Re: Google maps usage fees
#18http://polymaps.org could be a good alternative if you are willing to ditch support for <= ie8 (non svg browsers).
Re: Google maps usage fees
#19At $work in Australia, we went through this a couple months ago. After an initial quote that was beyond ridiculous, we worked out a much better deal with the local Google reseller. In addition, to help keep map views down we stopped unconditionally loading the map. Instead we have a placeholder image which when clicked loads the maps API dynamically. Google's fine with this behaviour as long as we don't use their map image.
We looked at other map providers, and in particular Bing and TileStream/OSM. But Bing's cost was 1) nearly what Google wanted and 2) confusing to try and get an actual price because there are about 10 different ways to get a Bing maps license. OSM ended up being ruled out because 1) we weren't confident in the data quality in India and Malaysia and 2) I couldn't find an easy way to geocode.
I wish I had known about the Mapstraction project freyfogle mentioned. I would have seriously considered using it since we were already moving from v2 to v3 of the Google Maps API. Future proofing our maps implementation would have been nice.
Re: Google maps usage fees
#20As someone who runs a service where a google map is THE interface, I don't think these rates are all that bad considering how powerful of a tool gmaps is. However, my service doesn't come close to the 25k required before billing comes in to the picture. I do wonder what the people behind padmapper.com think, which most likely will get charged and has a similar gmap as the service interface. The really interesting cas…
As the person behind PadMapper ( http://www.padmapper.com ), this isn't the best news I've gotten this week. What's yours?
Hi Eric! I run http://impromptudo.com. Though it's been neglected. Obviously PadMapper is/was a huge influence on my project, keep up the good work.
Any plans for your next move? New map provider? Pony up?