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Google warns that rate limits, overage fees are coming to Maps API

arstechnica.com

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Re: Google warns that rate limits, overage fees are coming to Maps API

#51

Post by magicalist »

alphamale3000 wrote: post #47
magicalist wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that can't be right. the limits here get you 25k*365=9,125,000 views per year for free.

it is right... with the premier pricing. EDIT: fill in the form you'll get the pricing... 10k$ upfront for 10MM views: http://www.google.com/support/enterprise/bin/request.py?cont...

since it's being positioned as the more cost effective option as views go up, that still doesn't make sense. Can you provide a link?

EDIT: ok, so that's an order of magnitude difference from your first post. that's well below the CPM for the "overage" charge, but well over it if you take into account the 25k initial views per day. It still doesn't make sense if they are legitimately offering that as the better high-end option.

I don't want to go all ad-hominemy, but based on your "Google Maps is dead, long live OpenStreetMap!" comment, I'm going to go ahead and take your numbers with a gigantic grain of salt :)

Re: Google warns that rate limits, overage fees are coming to Maps API

#52

Post by palish »

acavailhez wrote: post #28
ChrisLTD wrote: post #21

I remember in the 90s when we lambasted Microsoft for cornering markets with free products (IE) so they could drive out the competition (Netscape) and eventually start charging for them when we had no other choice. Luckily that never really happened, Microsoft never started charging for IE. While Google isn't exactly doing that here, it's coming awfully close.

I agree with that, it is quite similar to what they did with youtube and the unbearing amount of ad that one has to endure before watching a video now, after 5 years+ of making it available free of annoyance.

I don't have to bear one second of Youtube ads. (Thank you AdBlock!)

The "Shark Week" ad that literally screamed at me at 11PM was the straw that broke my mental back. I immediately installed AdBlock.

Re: Google warns that rate limits, overage fees are coming to Maps API

#54

Post by zone411 »

I'm really surprised that Google would make such a sudden change. I would've expected lower rates or allowing free use if AdSense ads are placed on the maps or on the same page. Such changes could've been easier to accept for many sites instead of making them look for alternatives. It appears that they decided that the branding effect of having the Google logo and copyright plastered on so many Web pages wasn't doing much.

Re: Google warns that rate limits, overage fees are coming to Maps API

#55

Post by chollida1 »

shashashasha wrote: post #16
rorrr wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the pricing is absolutely ridiculous. At least there are alternatives: 1) Yahoo maps 2) Bing maps 3) OpenStreetMap 4) Nokia Maps 5) Cloudmade

There's also (I'm as surprised as you are) Mapquest. They have a whole host of open APIs now, built on OSM, and even have web services like directions/elevation: http://developer.mapquest.com/web/products/open http://developer.mapquest.com/web/products/open/directions-s...

Ahh Mapquest. I'd forgotten all about them.

They are one of the poster children for early success and then resting on their laurels while the competition ate their lunch.

Re: Google warns that rate limits, overage fees are coming to Maps API

#57

Post by v01 »

arctangent wrote: post #19
robin_reala wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that not what Google Maps Premier is for? http://www.google.com/enterprise/earthmaps/maps.html

I imagine so - I've already requested info. It will take my company literally months to push through a contract for something like this. Google will be required to tender, alongside other comparable services. I just don't see that happening...

If your company is going to consume large volumes of mapcalls you will definitely need the tiered pricing which they do offer per client basis.

It's possible to get 50% discounts of the $4 price (if you do more that 100,000,000 per year)

Re: Google warns that rate limits, overage fees are coming to Maps API

#58

Post by v01 »

easp wrote: post #48
fr0sty wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like they are trying to push their high-bandwidh users to enterprise pricing. The $10k/yr Enterprise licence works out to $27/day which breaks even with the incremental pricing at 58k visits/day.

Isn't $10k/yr just the starting price of the enterprise license, don't they have tiered pricing there too?

There is tiered pricing. Per client basis... with large discounts for large volumes.

Re: Google warns that rate limits, overage fees are coming to Maps API

#59

Post by saurik »

onemoreact wrote: post #32
JonWood wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$50/acct/year comes to $4.16/acct/month. If your staff's use of email isn't in someway contributing to making more then $4.16/month you should probably just fire them, or not give them an email address in the first place.

50 users @ 4.16$ / month = 208$ / month subtracting 50$ / month in HW and bandwidth you left your admins with about 3 hours of work @50$ an hour including overhead. Sorry, most admins spend more than 3 hours a month dealing with internal email at small companies. (Troubleshooting, offsite backups, SPAM, logs etc.)

JonWood is claiming that "yes, even small companies would want this" by making an economic argument about the value of e-mail per employee; his claim is that $4.16/month/employee, even with a handful of employees, is not that much.

Meanwhile, you seem to be making a snippy ("sorry") counter-argument that his calculations are failing to take into account that if he had that much money to spend, he would be underestimating the cost of his system administrators, which would cost more than that.

I am sorry, but I don't understand... you both seem to be agreeing with and arguing with his point, by claiming that something unrelated (the units don't even seem the same to me: money made per employee vs. money spent per administrator) was not taken into account.

Re: Google warns that rate limits, overage fees are coming to Maps API

#60

Post by schwanksta »

roblobue wrote: post #53

On reading this I wondered if this was meant to target Apple? I'm sure the Maps app uses over 25k API calls a day.

Probably not. The guy who authored the blog post says that Google Maps use in Android apps won't be bound, I imagine the same would be true for iOS: https://twitter.com/thormitchell/status/129665976001236994
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