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Farewell, Google Maps

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Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#101

Post by linsomniac »

kirbypineapple wrote: post #85
linsomniac wrote: post #65

I'm just finishing spinning up OpenStreetMap servers in EC2 as one of the last stages of our testing, and they look great. We almost went with Mapbox, which is probably a pretty good alternative. But as part of that move I decided to try OSM tiles and I had them up and running in an afternoon via a docker image, created an Ansible role for deploying virtual machines that evening, and had tiles for our region built th…

How does Mapbox stack up against what you've built? Does Mapbox provide any advantages or is are the two not very comparable? How difficult would it be to spin up a Mapbox competitor?

How does Mapbox stack up against what we've built? Well, they have way more people working on the problem, so there's going to be more support and more eyes on the problem. I didn't directly compare map tiles, that was a couple other people on my team. We decided to try moving forward with our own OSM-based tiles, so the conclusion I've come to is that it compares favorably.

How difficult would it be to build a competitor to Mapbox? Well, if all you care about are map tiles, it's no big deal. If you want to build a business around it, that's always work. You're going to need to build the tiles, have infrastructure to serve it, monitoring, staff to manage it, billing and charging infrastructure, etc...

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#102

Post by bflesch »

alrex021 wrote: post #84
bflesch wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you get into trouble with your unit economics given such a raise, then you really need to think about your business model. How much value is your business really creating ON TOP of the maps? I don't want to be snarky, but I think many businesses don't think enough about this issue of value creation.

A 20x jump on the monthly charge, especially in lower margin business, will hurt whichever way you look at it, IMHO.

That's exactly what I was suggesting: If you are stuck in a low margin business and see that a provider such as google is screwing up your margins, you should really try to work on another idea which has higher margins.

Working on a low margin business is a choice! You can always ditch it and try to find something with higher margins (= higher value created for users).

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#103

Post by Zaskoda »

linsomniac wrote: post #65

I'm just finishing spinning up OpenStreetMap servers in EC2 as one of the last stages of our testing, and they look great. We almost went with Mapbox, which is probably a pretty good alternative. But as part of that move I decided to try OSM tiles and I had them up and running in an afternoon via a docker image, created an Ansible role for deploying virtual machines that evening, and had tiles for our region built th…

I only came to the comments to upvote whoever mentioned OpenStreetMaps. It needs our love.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#104

Post by voltagex_ »

woohoo7676 wrote: post #35

I work for a startup that has mapping/routing as one of its core needs - about a year or two ago we decided that our reliance on Google's mapping APIs was too great and decided to work on having a switchable backup provider in case something like this should ever happen. With auto complete especially, we would have had a 10-20x increase in pricing (and this is with an 'enterprise' plan pricing). As the article says,…

Writing a mapping abstraction layer is tricky - mostly because Google Maps does things differently than other providers. Can you share any details?

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#105

Post by chadlavi »

dokem wrote: post #63
chadlavi wrote: post #17

TIL there is a paid API for google maps, I just assumed it was free to use. Seems pretty nickel-and-dimey.

Consider, for a moment, how much value a company like Uber gets from the Google Maps API.

Charging large partners like that makes sense, but the part that seems dumb is charging small businesses and startups at the same rate as behemoths like Uber.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#106

Post by ericd »

paulie_a wrote: post #97
ericd wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL either, but yeah, the practice you're describing, using revenues from other parts of a business to subsidize the areas it wants to compete hard in until the competitors are dead, is typically known as "predatory pricing", which is illegal. IIRC, Standard Oil was a big user of that playbook. I don't know if this qualifies, and I don't know how much appetite there is for prosecuting Google for offering useful thi…

You never ever need to explain that you are not a lawyer on an internet post. you can outright claim you are a lawyer without any worries. Cooking meth if you have a valid driver's license is actually legal, I am a lawyer this is legal advice

Not worried about liability, just letting people know that there's a very good chance that I've completely misinterpreted the law. Maybe you're right and it's not useful.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#107

Post by majewsky »

beerlord wrote: post #56

I think the GDPR and EU fine is going to trigger Google - and perhaps other large American tech companies - to actually start charging for services, now that our personal data cannot be so easily sold. Google has been enjoying huge profits, so is probably setting the pricing on those services at the level required to maintain those profits. I think what we will see in the maps arena is multiple-country specific maps…

I'm just as in favor of GDPR as you, but I shall reserve my cheers for when the first actual GPDR fines are handed out. For now, I'm mostly seeing annoyed SMEs on one side who go to ridiculous lengths to be compliant in the face of missing precedents.

And on the other side, big internet corps are implementing joke consent pages with tons of dark patterns that clearly go against the spirit of the regulation. I think they're pretty certain that they will eventually be fined, but they've done the math and found that milking customer data for the X years until the first fines are imposed is more profitable than complying now and not risking a fine.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#108

Post by duxup »

Just as a n00b who thought the fact that I could make these silly custom maps "OMG look the pins are silly things now!" on Google Maps was super cool... I'm disappointed.

I get that anything I do on my own is likely below the threshold.... but at the same time I feel like this likely will somewhat reduce maps usage and what if any bragging rights I might have with an employer (if I can find one ;)).

For me I maybe wonder if I'm going to make a hobby app that I should look at alternatives instead, or just quit dorking with Google Maps in my spare time...

Granted this is all very individual light stuff, but I wonder if it is a consideration people will have considering how dramatic and sudden the price change has been.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#109

Post by voltagex_ »

synesso wrote: post #77

TallyGo employee here. We have free map impressions for customers of our navigation SDK.

If you're going to promote your product you should probably have a link in your comment.

Few things:

* Who's your mapping provider?

* Why do I need to sign up to even see example code?

* Why would I use this over something like MapBox?

* What's your accuracy like in Australia?

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