That's really a very high price compared to the competition. $7 for 1000 views!?
Farewell, Google Maps
131–140 of 545 posts
Re: Farewell, Google Maps
#132Google Maps strength is largely due in part to their surveying of roads with those funky looking vehicles I think most of us have seen. If one were to develop an app that could use anyone's GPS to do the same as what Google is paying money for... it could pose a real threat to them. A "crowdsourced" map of sorts..
I think their navigation offering is another strong moat in terms of just plain old maps.
I'm sure Google is mining all of that sweet, sweet GPS data from people using their navigation. I can imagine some machine learning of aeriel imagery and some sort of GPS path clustering helps them get a lot of the last mile.
Navigation also helps them get real time traffic data and allows them to learn how costly certain road segments are.
Re: Farewell, Google Maps
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
I totally recommend hosting your own tile-server using open street map if you have the resources . Creating your own tile-server is not as difficult as it may sound however it is really resource intensive, especially if you want to cover large areas. For a single EU country it shouldn't be that resource intensive. I have set it up on a Centos 7 server using more or less the instructions from here https://switch2osm.o…
The fastest way, if you don't have resources and don't mind being up to a few months behind, is to use OpenMapTiles vector tiles [1]. The download is an SQLite database with a standard-ish structure (MBTiles), you can either write a small server or use theirs. I needed vector tiles in other projections — WGS84 equirectangualar, an Arctic one, and an Antarctic one. Generating those took many hours on a cluster. [1] ht…
It's not comparable to OSM tiles as it's paid for licencing for commercial use.
Re: Farewell, Google Maps
#134"Sudden change of policy by Google, which is directed specifically at startups (as smaller web sites should largely remain below even the new lower thresholds), is surely an unpleasant surprise for us and does not create much trust in Google as a vendor. In the future we would therefore keep our distance from Google Cloud and avoid deep integration with any Google services on which it can pull a similar trick. For ex…
> In the case of maps, there weren't many great alternatives for a long time, due to Google sucking all the oxygen/profit potential out of the field with their excellent free offerings. There was a related discussion[0] on HN a few weeks ago that I found enlightening. Commentator ucaetano's phrasing of the strategy was "create a desert of profitability around you". The discussion of moats vs deserts found here [1] is…
Ha, that was me! Thanks for the bump!
Re: Farewell, Google Maps
#135The upside of this change is it should help raise awareness and investment in mapping products that are open source and use open data.
Off the top of my head, there are a number of companies/services that can serve as alternatives to Google Maps, and one way or another they all contribute to the collective quality of open source and open data map tools:
* geocode.earth (https://geocode.earth) has geocoding including autocomplete based on Pelias(https://github.com/pelias/pelias)
* Interline can help with routing, OSM extracts, and transit data(https://interline.io)
* Stadia Maps also offers map tiles and routing (https://stadiamaps.com/)
* GraphHopper (https://www.graphhopper.com/) offers routing and geocoding
* OpenCage (https://opencagedata.com/) offers geocoding based mainly on Nominatim but also a bunch of other geocoders
* Jawg.io (https://www.jawg.io/en/) offers maps, routing, and geocoding
Roughly speaking, open data allows for lower prices because investing directly in gathering proprietary data is super expensive. Open data coverage is getting pretty good in lots of areas, and is better than proprietary data in a lot of developing cities (like Jakarta). It can often be updated much more quickly. Google is notorious for taking a long time to fix errors.
Likewise open source map tools are definitely behind Google in many respects, but there's the advantage of transparency and ease of migration if one particular provider happens to go away, or customization is needed.
I'm sure I'm missing some services, and am happy to talk more about any of the challenges/features as much as I know.
Disclosures: I am a co-founder of geocode.earth, and a former employee of Mapzen, along with the founders of Interline
Re: Farewell, Google Maps
#136We switched from Google Maps to OpenMapTiles for the same reason. Running OpenMapTiles via Docker was pretty easy. We bought a license for the Tiles (Europe) and it was a one time fee only.
Interesting, you had to purchase a license for the tiles? I thought that OpenMapTiles were "open".
They're under something like a non-commercial license.
Three parts of a map are copyrightable.
The map data is © OpenStreetMap under their open license, but OpenMapTiles claim copyright on the cartography of their tiles — since they aren't an exact copy of OSM, they decide what to filter for each zoom level, what to simplify for performance and so on.
Additionally, if you choose to use it, a map style is copyright: the design of showing motorways in blue at 4px and cycle paths in green, for example.
For the tiles you see on OpenStreetMap.org, all three parts are under open licenses. (And there are decisions at all three levels, for example OSM's database contains the water features you see at OpenSeaMap.org, but doesn't render them.)
Re: Farewell, Google Maps
#137> Google Maps is objectively the best product on its market, in many regards positioned light years ahead of its competitors.
Why would they not increase the price, then?
Something I've realized as I've gotten older: sometimes you can't afford the best. That is why there is a market for the cheaper options.
Re: Farewell, Google Maps
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fastest way, if you don't have resources and don't mind being up to a few months behind, is to use OpenMapTiles vector tiles [1]. The download is an SQLite database with a standard-ish structure (MBTiles), you can either write a small server or use theirs. I needed vector tiles in other projections — WGS84 equirectangualar, an Arctic one, and an Antarctic one. Generating those took many hours on a cluster. [1] ht…
It's not comparable to OSM tiles as it's paid for licencing for commercial use.
That's correct — I'd forgotten that, as my project has the open data use license.
However, as an example, the one-time $40 for Colorado is likely to be much cheaper than generating them yourself, and is probably adequate if you don't need to keep up to date.
Re: Farewell, Google Maps
#139"Sudden change of policy by Google, which is directed specifically at startups (as smaller web sites should largely remain below even the new lower thresholds), is surely an unpleasant surprise for us and does not create much trust in Google as a vendor. In the future we would therefore keep our distance from Google Cloud and avoid deep integration with any Google services on which it can pull a similar trick. For ex…
While I've experienced the frustration of having a formerly free service develop paid tiers (and policies that put me in those tiers), of all the changes a software service can make, this is the one that frustrates me the least, or at any rate less than: * shutting down the service entirely because the user base never grew into customers who actually valued the service * changing your terms of service to forbid an ac…
> A big price bump with a few months notice is painful (and I'm glad it's bringing competition), but it tells me they're thinking seriously about how to sustain/develop the product and lets both them and me explore the real value of the service.
This is a bit of “thank you sir may I have another”. 10x price increases? It’s not sustainable? This is just a money grab - they’re not going to give a roadmap for how in the future google maps will be worth 10x the value - it seems to me more of a statement from Google that they have no real competition in the space.
Re: Farewell, Google Maps
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Counterpoint: if these startups need a giant subsidized mapping product for free or else they aren't profitable, they weren't ever profitable . I mean, there's a real cry-me-a-river aspect here. No one has a Google-granted fundamental right to mapping. It's a free product Google released to drive traffic to their own offerings, and which they happen to make available for free for a lot of purposes. As it turns out, y…
The article said nothing about making it free, it said that the costs, which were previously in line with competitors, increased by very, very large amounts without any perceived increase in value. Then they looked at options which were commercial offerings which cost dramatically less. They are paying for the service, it's not subsidized or free. It's like you didn't read any of the article.
They were in the free tier, so they were not paying. They even have a nice graph that shows it.