
Google warns that rate limits, overage fees are coming to Maps API - shawndumas
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2011/10/google-warns-that-rate-limits-overage-fees-are-coming-to-maps-api.ars
======
ChrisLTD
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.

~~~
acavailhez
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.

~~~
palish
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.

~~~
cpeterso
Some video ads (on YouTube and elsewhere) can detect AdBlock and refuse to
play the video.

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jroseattle
This has an MBA-in-charge smell about it.

I'm not certain how many GMap implementations there are that exceed a 25k/day
load, but my back-of-the-napkin guesstimation is <10% of all sites that use
Google Maps.

But, those are exactly the sites that I want using my maps, instead of Yahoo
or Bing or some other provider.

Unless there's something I'm missing, this seems penny-wise and pound-foolish.

~~~
untog
There's actually not a _huge_ benefit to Google in my site using Google Maps
instead of Yahoo Maps. There is a branding benefit for sure, but there are no
links to Google services, no ads, or anything like that.

I've been wondering for a long time when this would come- the processing
(getting directions, geocoding, etc) and bandwidth (for map images) demands
must be huge, with comparatively little payback.

It'll be interesting to see how many big operations pay up, and how many
switch. To an extent switching might be futile- if Google can't afford to keep
the maps offering free, do you really think Yahoo can?

~~~
7952
Don't forget the cost of the actual data. Remote sensing satellites are not
cheap. Google Maps is heavily dependant on a few companies who provide the
bulk of the data.

~~~
rmc
They have driven cars around nearly all the roads in several countries taking
photos of everything... They could use that to make better maps.

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aresant
" \- the "JavaScript API or the static maps API will be capped at 25,000 map
loads per day.

\- They will be expected to pay a fee of $4 per thousand loads in excess of
the limit.

\- The cap is set to 2,500 loads for styled maps that customize the
presentation.

\- After 25,000 loads, the overage fee for styled maps will bump up to $8 per
thousand. "

That is no joke, a $4 - $8 CPM on map loads means your app has to be doing
substantially better than that, which is NOT an easy enterprise.

~~~
rorrr
Yeah, the pricing is absolutely ridiculous.

At least there are alternatives:

1) Yahoo maps

2) Bing maps

3) OpenStreetMap

4) Nokia Maps

5) Cloudmade

~~~
shashashasha
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...](http://developer.mapquest.com/web/products/open/directions-
service)

~~~
chollida1
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.

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pbz
Seems to me like Google has only two dials: free or expensive. For example, in
the case of Google Apps, the jump from free to $50 per account / year is
rather steep imo. $4 fee for each 1K over seems rather expensive. Anybody know
the price range for the subscription?

~~~
ceol
I agree with you that Google's Apps pricing is steep, but I don't think
they're marketing it towards the average guy who just wants a couple of email
accounts for his personal site. I think they're marketing it towards
businesses and schools who see $50/acct/yr as pennies compared to hosting
their own email server, hiring a sysadmin (or telling their current admin to
handle it), and then supporting that server all day, every day.

I'm not a small business owner, though, so I don't know how much one would
generally pay for email, or how much $50/person/yr is compared to the rest of
the business.

~~~
JonWood
$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.

~~~
pbz
I'm talking about places where maybe 10 people really need email and 100 other
maybe once a week if that. You can definitely justify the cost for those 10
people, but not for the other 100.

If you could mix and match free and non-free accounts this would work great,
but you can't. Again, I'm talking about companies with razor thin margins
where the technology side is not super important. What do they do now? They
mainly use free gmail/live/yahoo accounts.

~~~
JonWood
You can in fact mix and match - you can use Google Apps on top of a corporate
system such as Exchange for only specific users. It's unlikely to save you any
money since you'll then need someone to run it, but it's possible.

As things stand at the moment the company I'm working for is in exactly that
boat of some staff depending on email, and others only needing to retrieve a
single email on each day they're working. We're working around it right now by
just getting them to give us their personal email address.

That probably won't scale long term, but for now it does the job, and if we
get to the point of needing more then I may just throw together a quick and
dirty mail server for the people who don't need the convenience of Google Apps
syncing between devices for them.

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willfully_lost
_Reposted from other Maps thread_

Aren't the limits IP based? This page on Google's 'Geocoding Strategies' seems
to say so:
[http://code.google.com/apis/maps/articles/geocodestrat.html#...](http://code.google.com/apis/maps/articles/geocodestrat.html#quota-
limits)

So as long as your call to the Maps API goes out client side, aren't you ok?

~~~
lftl
I think the Maps API is different than the Geocode in that the Maps API
requires you to grab a key here:

<http://code.google.com/apis/maps/signup.html>

So to avoid it in that sense you'd have to force every one of your clients to
go grab an API key and input it.

~~~
willfully_lost
Look at the note at the top of the page you linked, Version 3 of the Maps API
doesn't require a key.

~~~
mildweed
Not only does v3 not require an API key, as of Sept 28 (a couple days before
the rate limiting went into effect) sending a v2 API key to v3 will cause the
request to fail:

[http://groups.google.com/group/google-maps-js-
api-v3-notify/...](http://groups.google.com/group/google-maps-js-
api-v3-notify/browse_thread/thread/46666c2d61f8bf66)

Sounds like they're laying the ground work for v3 to use API keys again.

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dannyr
Here's a Tweet from the Google Maps team:

Google Maps API is still free! Just has a limit of 25k maps/day. That means
pricing only affects the top 0.35% sites!

[https://twitter.com/#!/GoogleMapsAPI/status/1296873737002762...](https://twitter.com/#!/GoogleMapsAPI/status/129687373700276225)

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arctangent
I will be switching.

I quite like the Google Maps API but in my company we're just not able to pay
for things with credit cards or in fact to pay for anything we don't know the
cost of up-front (i.e. variable billing). We'll happily and routinely pay
hundreds of millions to suppliers so long as we have a contract, of course.

This is no doubt more of an indictment of my employer's internal processes and
policies rather than Google, but it does mean that the "standard" maps
platform I built will have to be re-written to use another source of tile data
etc.

But it does seem like this means I have some re-work to do :-(

~~~
robin_reala
Is that not what Google Maps Premier is for?

<http://www.google.com/enterprise/earthmaps/maps.html>

~~~
arctangent
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...

~~~
v01
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)

~~~
arctangent
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 Google or the other players in
this space would even bother to tender anyway.)

So the only option remaining is to rebuild the mapping solution using another
technology to ensure continuity of service.

~~~
robin_reala
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
:/

~~~
v01
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.

------
randall
They say the premiere service will be cheaper than the overage.

<http://www.google.com/enterprise/earthmaps/maps-compare.html>

Unfortunately, they don't list pricing in an obvious way.

~~~
redstripe
I beleive it's 10K per year.

~~~
septicmadman
Yep <http://www.google.com/enterprise/earthmaps/maps-faq.html>

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lrfunk
There are some incredible Google Maps mashups, but I wonder how many make
enough money to pay Google. I sure hope this isn't too tall a hurdle for
PadMapper.

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chrismealy
Yahoo maps isn't bad, and as far as I can tell they aren't enforcing their
limits.

~~~
thomasgerbe
Meh.

Google maps UI is by far better than Yahoo maps. That and the street view/bike
maps/etc. are features that give it a nice edge over alternatives.

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wensing
Glad we (Stormpulse) made the decision to build our own mapping system.

~~~
krschultz
Off topic, but your site is awesome.

~~~
wensing
Haha, awesome, thanks.

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rohitkumar
Shit! There are so many sites out there using this API. And many are totally
dependent on it - location is the cornerstone of their model. Zaarly,
Foodspotting, AirBnb, GetAround - every location-based P2P platform.

I guess this was inevitable. But maybe we can switch to a different maps API?
Google is so smooth though.

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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.

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ww520
It's time like this that RMS Free Software message really stands out.
Corporations will screw you eventually no matter how sweet they sound
initially.

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roblobue
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.

~~~
schwanksta
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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ajtaylor
At $work we signed for the Premier agreement. We're paying more than $10k/year
but it's still reasonable for the benefits it gives us. There are ways to keep
your map views down when they aren't essential to the page. :)

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sturadnidge
When spending $12bil on a second rate hardware company is cheaper than the
legal cost of patent defense, things like this will happen.

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alphamale3000
Google Maps is dead, long live OpenStreetMap!

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loceng
Visual candy for the world that people didn't know they wanted - but want. +1

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gcb
So, does this mean they can't monetize ads on maps?

