

Ask HN: Is it possible to use the Google Earth plugin on a commercial website? - whiskers

I'm probably being stupid but half an hours searching has not led me to any concrete opinion either way!<p>Is anyone aware of the licensing/costs to embed the Google Earth plugin (and manipulate it with the API) on a site that has a commercial aspect to it? (i.e. charges users for a service that is partially related to the mapping function).
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michael_dorfman
A half an hour?

I don't want to get all "Get off my lawn!" on your ass, but really-- if this
is important to you, you ought to spend more than a half an hour on it before
asking someone else to do the research for you.

If it's not important, well then, all the more reason not to fob the research
off on other people.

Sheesh.

Anyway, the answer to your question is in the TOS
(<http://code.google.com/apis/maps/terms.html>)

 _9.1 Free, Public Accessibility to Your Maps API Implementation. Your Maps
API Implementation must be generally accessible to users without charge. You
may require users to log in to your Maps API Implementation if you do not
require users to pay a fee. Unless you have entered into a separate written
agreement with Google or obtained Google's written permission, your Maps API
Implementation must not:

(a) require a fee-based subscription or other fee-based restricted access; or
(b) operate only behind a firewall or only on an internal network (except
during the development and testing phase)._

So sure, you can use it on a commercial site-- as long as you are not
(directly or indirectly) charging for the map access.

For example: suppose you have a site selling CDs. You could use the Google
Earth/Maps API to show where the CDs were recorded, as long as this part of
the site is freely available to all comers.

~~~
whiskers
Well that's me told!

I did find that ToS but I wasn't sure that "Maps API" and "Google Earth Maps
API" were interchangeable. I'll dig deeper...

My intention is to provide a map based preview of some real-time data as the
entry point to the service (publicly accessible, no charge) and then to charge
for extended information/alerts. It sounds like that should be acceptable use.

