Farewell, Google Maps • Hacker News Board

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#361

Post by _hl_ » Fri, Jul 20, 2018, 8:33 AM UTC

I maintain a small hobby site that used to have two embedded Google maps. The site is absolutely tiny and would have been well within Google's free tier, and yet I happily moved away from Google Maps when they made the change.

Without warning, the two maps suddenly stopped working properly and were covered in grey boxes. Looking for a solution in the documentation, I noticed the new pricing model (the email notice only came after their final deadline) and decided to try generating new API keys. Unfortunately, Google didn't update their API console in time and I was thrown into an endless redirect loop.

When I was finally able to obtain my new keys some days later, the two embedded maps refused to load with an unspecific "no longer supported" message. Google's documentation also didn't seem to be updated with any breaking changes.

I then decided to move to OpenStreetMap, which also looks much better in my opinion.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#362

Post by dmortin » Fri, Jul 20, 2018, 8:35 AM UTC

seshagiric wrote: post #27

It's strange they haven't tried Bing Maps (differnt than Azure maps), it has a much rich web control and support for Javascript which per the article was one of the selection criteria.

Bing maps does not publish pricing info AFAIK. Last time I checked it said contact sales, no price was given.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#363

Post by mastef » Fri, Jul 20, 2018, 8:43 AM UTC

The weird part is that a Firebase plan for one of my side-projects suddenly auto-updated to the paid "Firebase Blaze". The email notification stated : "Your project was upgraded due to activity in Google Cloud"

"A user has set a new billing account for your project in the Google Cloud Platform console. This initiated billing for your project, resulting in an upgrade to your project's Firebase plan."

Issue with that is that I never made such a change. So how could "A user" have made this change?

The resulting frenzy in inspecting admin and user-logs ( and checking if my account was hacked ) just found a new billing entry called "Google Maps Platform Transition Account" that was suddenly linked to this Firebase project.

And I don't even seem to have permissions to inspect it.

Very confusing indeed.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#364

Post by dmortin » Fri, Jul 20, 2018, 8:43 AM UTC

roadbeats wrote: post #345

I would never trust Google as a business partner based on only my personal experiences. Here is a list of problems I had with Google and its services; - Firebase suddenly changed its pricing, claiming that they were calculating prices incorrectly. A tiny multiplayer game that I made for kids were not fitting the free tier anymore, and my account was locked until I make payment. A sudden e-mail at 6am in the morning w…

> A tiny multiplayer game that I made for kids were not fitting the free tier anymore, and my account was locked until I make payment.

Doesn't Firebase have a daily quota, so your app just stops working for the rest of the day if it goes over quota? I though it would reset the next day.

Or in case of a storage quota you can't store more data until you delete some to go below the limit.

Did you try deleting some data, or they locked your Firebase access completely so you couldn't do anything?

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#365

Post by dmortin » Fri, Jul 20, 2018, 8:44 AM UTC

Jerry2 wrote: post #341

dmortin wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much does the developer account cost?

$99/year. https://developer.apple.com/support/compare-memberships/

I don't get it why they ask for money from people who want to learn their platform. They should be happy more people want to develop for them and charge for actual API usage instead above the free quota.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#366

Post by dmortin » Fri, Jul 20, 2018, 8:47 AM UTC

mastef wrote: post #363

The weird part is that a Firebase plan for one of my side-projects suddenly auto-updated to the paid "Firebase Blaze". The email notification stated : "Your project was upgraded due to activity in Google Cloud" "A user has set a new billing account for your project in the Google Cloud Platform console. This initiated billing for your project, resulting in an upgrade to your project's Firebase plan." Issue with that i…

AFAIK people who did not set up billing get this transition account so their access is not cut off completely.

https://groups.google.com/forum/?#!topic/firebase-talk/jWRCd...

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#367

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 20, 2018, 8:55 AM UTC

mastef wrote: post #363

The weird part is that a Firebase plan for one of my side-projects suddenly auto-updated to the paid "Firebase Blaze". The email notification stated : "Your project was upgraded due to activity in Google Cloud" "A user has set a new billing account for your project in the Google Cloud Platform console. This initiated billing for your project, resulting in an upgrade to your project's Firebase plan." Issue with that i…

[deleted]

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#368

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 20, 2018, 8:56 AM UTC

mastef wrote: post #363

The weird part is that a Firebase plan for one of my side-projects suddenly auto-updated to the paid "Firebase Blaze". The email notification stated : "Your project was upgraded due to activity in Google Cloud" "A user has set a new billing account for your project in the Google Cloud Platform console. This initiated billing for your project, resulting in an upgrade to your project's Firebase plan." Issue with that i…

[deleted]

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#369

Post by collyw » Fri, Jul 20, 2018, 8:57 AM UTC

laGrenouille wrote: post #182

ajross wrote: post #111

Earlier 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 problem isn’t that Google wants to charge for a service. The issue is that they offered it for years for free or below cost effectively price gouging any competition. Now, with no alternatives they jack up the price. Classic monopolistic and anticompetitive behaviour.

When I was a teenage I was told that thats how drug dealers operated - get you hooked on something for free, then ramp up the price once you are hooked.

Never heard of any drug dealer that did that in my adult life, but I do see a lot of large corporations using that business model.

Re: Farewell, Google Maps

#370

Post by beerlord » Fri, Jul 20, 2018, 8:57 AM UTC

majewsky wrote: post #233

beerlord wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really a fan of GDPR actually. I think advertising has its place, and the more targeted it is, the better the results for everyone. The worst thing that people can point to that this kind of advertising has caused is fake news on Facebook, which is more of a problem with America's campaign financing (non)restrictions than anything (and probably the fact that the candidate who used it was quite anti-establishm…

> The worst thing that people can point to that this kind of advertising has caused is fake news on Facebook The worst thing about targeted ads is that we're building an insane surveillance infrastructure that the government is already eager to tap into, and will be even more eager if one of our governments devolves into dictatorship. I'm from East Germany; and while I'm too young to have experienced it myself, the S…

If you're German, you now have a significant minority of your population (invited into your country directly or indirectly by your own politicians) who have set out to defraud, rob, kill, rape or terrorise you. Don't you think some kind of monitoring apparatus is appropriate for that?