

Ask HN: Can I print and sell custom waterproof Google Maps? - andrewljohnson

I run a hiking website called www.trailbehind.com, and we have maps of all the US parks and forests. As one way to monetize the site, we plan to sell custom-printed maps.<p>Other sites currently sell custom print-outs of USGS topo maps. However, Google's tiles now overlay topo lines at the appropriate zoom level and are comparable, if not better than a lot of USGS maps.<p>My question is: can I print and sell maps using Google's titles? I had a hard time finding an answer on Google, so I thought I'd ask here.
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inklesspen
<http://maps.google.com/help/terms_maps.html>

Section 2, subsection b and c says no.

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asmithmd1
Check out <http://www.openstreetmap.org/> It is like Wikipedia for maps. Add
your trails to their maps and then you can do anything you want with it as
long as you credit them.

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andrewljohnson
I love OSM and admire the stuff they do. But their tiles are no comparison to
Google's tiles, especially for printing topo maps as I want to do, nor for
displaying our maps.

I even have a friend who works there :)

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jmtame
You might want to contact their biz dev and see if you can arrange a license
program, where for every x maps you sell, you pay a royalty to them.

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dandelany
Heh, yes. Contact the Google Maps biz dev team. If it's anything like their
tech support, I'm sure they'll get back to you in short order. </sarcasm>

Seriously though, you're probably better off dealing with OpenStreetMap or
something where you don't have to deal with licensing. If you do license maps,
do it with someone who you can have an actual adult phone conversation with.
The bozos answering e-mails at Google will likely give you the bureaucratic
runaround (or reacharound), if they ever get back to you at all.

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jmtame
It's worth a shot. I actually like the idea, and with the amount of people
working there you never know who might field your call.

Anyway, certainly shop around for alternatives. I like the idea, I think there
might be a niche market there.

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andrewljohnson
I contacted Google's BizDev about getting more than 15,000 geocodes per day,
and my email fell into the abyss. I don't think I rate :)

