Google warns that rate limits, overage fees are coming to Maps API • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by robin_reala » Fri, Oct 28, 2011, 8:20 AM UTC

arctangent wrote: post #67

v01 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

The main problem is that my company (an executive agency of the UK government, effectively) can't enter into this kind of financial agreement easily, precisely because we have such a huge budget (numbered in the billions). Any contract we sign needs to be for a fixed price, rather than a variable amount. And amounts above a certain limit need to go out to competitive tender, which takes a long time. (I'm not sure Goo…

Well, if you’re playing in this big a space you could always run your own mapping server using OSM tiles. Of course, GIS guys in my experience tend to be extremely parochial and you might have difficulty in pushing that approach :/

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

#82

Post by stereo » Fri, Oct 28, 2011, 10:17 AM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #66

rmc wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankfully there is an alternative now (that wasn't nearly as good 5 years ago): OpenStreetMap. Their main *.openstreetmap.org has Tile Usage Policies, but there are other companies that provide free serives, and you can also host it yourself, render your own map, and pay your own bills. The data & tool chain is entirely Open, so you are not at the mercy of anyone.

Unfortunately OpenStreetMap doesn't really cut it. I'm using the GMaps API for geocoding addresses and in that regard it's the best one available, especially since it has a pretty high tolerance for spellings and non-standard address formats.

The quality of OpenStreetMap data really varies a lot. It is often better than Google in european cities.

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

#83

Post by dhimes » Fri, Oct 28, 2011, 12:11 PM UTC

wensing wrote: post #75

dhimes wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why haven't I heard of you? Are you b2b or gov't supplier? Very nice site.

We've sold to F500, SMB, and govt/mil.

Ah, that's why. I have a slew of sites I use for Wx (just amateur- boating, interest, and so on).

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

#84

Post by alphamale3000 » Fri, Oct 28, 2011, 3:30 PM UTC

magicalist wrote: post #51

alphamale3000 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-e…

I am less than happy that Google Maps is dead. OpenStreetMap is still far from being comparable.

I think I made a mistake with the figures. I just checked that email again and it says 10,000$ for 1 million page views per day for public facing deployments. What a shame.

Google is changing. They used to be startup friendly. Now they focus on internal startups, and with a switch of a button cut services to potential competing startups.

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

#85

Post by v01 » Fri, Oct 28, 2011, 4:26 PM UTC

arctangent wrote: post #67

v01 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

The main problem is that my company (an executive agency of the UK government, effectively) can't enter into this kind of financial agreement easily, precisely because we have such a huge budget (numbered in the billions). Any contract we sign needs to be for a fixed price, rather than a variable amount. And amounts above a certain limit need to go out to competitive tender, which takes a long time. (I'm not sure Goo…

If it wasn't clear I meant 100mil requests, not $$$. The pricing is fixed for a tier plan. This is no different than deciding which license to acquire for a service.

Do you have any insight into how large the volume of your map requests is?

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

#86

Post by v01 » Fri, Oct 28, 2011, 4:29 PM UTC

robin_reala wrote: post #81

arctangent wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem is that my company (an executive agency of the UK government, effectively) can't enter into this kind of financial agreement easily, precisely because we have such a huge budget (numbered in the billions). Any contract we sign needs to be for a fixed price, rather than a variable amount. And amounts above a certain limit need to go out to competitive tender, which takes a long time. (I'm not sure Goo…

Well, if you’re playing in this big a space you could always run your own mapping server using OSM tiles. Of course, GIS guys in my experience tend to be extremely parochial and you might have difficulty in pushing that approach :/

Saying "you could always" for something like this doesn't make any sense. To undertake creation of a mapping service with no/little expertise and if the main constraint is approval timeline doesn't even seem like an option.

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

#87

Post by arctangent » Fri, Oct 28, 2011, 8:36 PM UTC

v01 wrote: post #85

arctangent wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem is that my company (an executive agency of the UK government, effectively) can't enter into this kind of financial agreement easily, precisely because we have such a huge budget (numbered in the billions). Any contract we sign needs to be for a fixed price, rather than a variable amount. And amounts above a certain limit need to go out to competitive tender, which takes a long time. (I'm not sure Goo…

If it wasn't clear I meant 100mil requests, not $$$. The pricing is fixed for a tier plan. This is no different than deciding which license to acquire for a service. Do you have any insight into how large the volume of your map requests is?

No, it's a platform I've built for multiple teams within my organisation. So far I have just two instances, but there's a chance that several of them may wish to show geographic information about the availability of healthcare services within the UK, so then numbers could get big very quickly.

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

#88

Post by jrmg » Sun, Oct 30, 2011, 8:07 AM UTC

arctangent wrote: post #67

v01 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

The main problem is that my company (an executive agency of the UK government, effectively) can't enter into this kind of financial agreement easily, precisely because we have such a huge budget (numbered in the billions). Any contract we sign needs to be for a fixed price, rather than a variable amount. And amounts above a certain limit need to go out to competitive tender, which takes a long time. (I'm not sure Goo…

Surely that can't be literally true. How do you buy consumables? Surely you don't tender for contracts to provide a fixed amount of coffee or paperclips per year, choose one provider, then the amount provided just has to suffice no matter if it's too big or small?

Presuming you don't, perhaps you could find a way to get your superiors to think of things like map requests as akin to coffee or paperclips rather than a service or a piece of boxed software.