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Farewell, Google Maps

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Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#211

Post by sillysaurus3 »

komali2 wrote: post #187
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This ArenaNet situation sounds interesting. Could you post a link to it? I don't see much in search results.

Here's a couple analyses: https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/12/17565218/arenanet-guild-w... https://www.polygon.com/2018/7/10/17550276/guild-wars-2-aren... https://www.pcgamer.com/fired-arenanet-dev-calls-dismissal-a... In short, a woman working at ArenaNet, the company running GuildWars2 (an MMORPG), posted a twitter thread about her thoughts on designing narratives in an MMO. A prominent (male) streamer of the game r…

This is a really unique point of view. I think conversations would be improved with this mentality.

It might be a bit hard to swallow, though. Who's to say that a streamer is less qualified to analyze character writing in MMOs? After all, the writer is usually not the one impacted by the game. Streamers are.

I know nothing about this situation, though. I'm just saying that it would personally feel difficult to adopt this mindset if I felt like I were qualified to express a dissenting opinion.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#212

Post by falsedan »

eightchen wrote: post #184
bhhaskin wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is the problem. When Google first launched Maps it was free and they ran all of the other competition out of business. Now that all their competition are dead they want to charge for it. If that doesn't scream antitrust I don't know what else does. Google has grown maps using pretty shady tactics. Their data is only so good due to mining data from all the Android users and I bet Street View has a lot of governme…

Doesn't every tech company pretty much start free then start charging once they get all the users?

Maybe if they're VC-backed…

Vimeo has pretty much always had a shockingly* high price for their slightly-better plans, since they insist on covering their costs from subscriptions from the get-go. I'd be pretty confident they wouldn't bait-and-switch to grab some more cash (not the least since they're not the dominant video hosting provider). They compete on service and stability.

[*: in comparison to the other popular video hosting sites]

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#213

Post by PerfectElement »

Does anyone know of a good alternative to Google Places Autocomplete API? Our app makes 25k requests per day. They had a free 150k limit per day, but now it seems like we are going from $0 to $1,800 per month, and this is not a core feature of our app. I wouldn't mind paying a couple hundred dollars for it, but this price is almost what we pay for our whole infrastructure. The worst part is that we didn't get any notice and I learned about this increase here on HN.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#214

Post by hedora »

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

> Cooking meth if you have a valid driver's license is actually legal, I am a lawyer this is legal advice

Saying things like that could get you disbarred.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#215

Post by tomcam »

nullicorn wrote: post #177
tomcam wrote: post #156

It seems remarkably naive to assume a high quality business that is obviously expensive to run would remain free.

The problem isn't that Google Maps is not free, nor is it that they increased its price, but rather __how they went about__ increasing its price.

Not classy, I definitely agree. But it should be foreseable to anyone with a modicum of business sense

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#216

Post by JaggedNZ »

bflesch wrote: post #71
alrex021 wrote: post #44

In our own experience, we pleaded the fact that those dollar figures are just beyond workable if you consider the fact that we come from a developing country and we're faced with ~20x jump. I.e. it heavily messes with the unit economics. The Google representative actually laughed in our face (via Hangout).

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.

I know 1st world companies with millions of dollars in revenue who quickly switched away from Google Maps, at some expense, to alternate map providers after Google hiked up its prices for Premium customers a few years ago.

There where so many "why should we pay/develop X, Google does it for free" conversations at one of my previous employers who competes in the mapping space with Google.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#217

Post by callalex »

tomnipotent wrote: post #190
taurath wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Did you to read the article which mentions all the competitors that are available?

The wording was a bit confusing, but I think the GP meant that Google _thinks_ they have no competition so can get away with sudden price gouging.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#218

Post by jsjohnst »

Maybe it’s just me, but I find the MapBox version to look better and have comparable detail to Google (in these examples anyway), and at ~10x cheaper price, seems a no brainer.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#219

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

Why not host you own OSM data for Poland and Germany? Just reduce the detail level and unneeded layers and deliver vector tiles. This way you are the master of your own destiny and bear (most) of the true cost of your service without any middlemen to charge usurious tolls. Then just make an annual token donation to OSM for their data services and you are done.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#220

Post by justinclift »

komali2 wrote: post #163
anarazel wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I find it helpful. Stating the level of confidence, and that's what IANAL is to some degree, is helpful in judging a statement.

Warning: completely unrelated to thread topic. Poor grandparent got nuked in the votes, but I actually think this is an interesting discussion. It ties to my thoughts about politeness and behavior on the internet, which ties to my thoughts about the same IRL. Dale Carnegie, "How to Win Friends" type stuff. Is it effective to "hedge" your arguments/posts/words with a "now I might be wrong" / "you may know more about t…

Another way to hedge, but without obviously doing so, is to rephrase the statement as a question.

For (a super basic) example, instead of going with:

  Now, I might be wrong... but you should probabably do foo, then bar.  That would avoid baz completely.
Rephrased as a simple question:

  Would it be better to do foo, then bar?  That seems like it would avoid baz completely.
Perhaps give that a try? :)
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