
Farewell, Google Maps - ScottWRobinson
https://www.inderapotheke.de/blog/farewell-google-maps
======
ericd
"Sudden change of policy by Google, which is directed specifically at startups
(as smaller web sites should largely remain below even the new lower
thresholds), is surely an unpleasant surprise for us and does not create much
trust in Google as a vendor. In the future we would therefore keep our
distance from Google Cloud and avoid deep integration with any Google services
on which it can pull a similar trick. For example we would be wary on taking
free Google Analytics for granted."

I think this is one of the most important points in the article - the way they
handle these pricing changes destroys trust in Google's other business
offerings. How can people use Google products and services as a core piece of
their infrastructure when they're willing to bump their prices >10x with only
a few months of notice? That could literally be a business-ending event,
depending on how core that service is to the business.

In the case of maps, there weren't many great alternatives for a long time,
due to Google sucking all the oxygen/profit potential out of the field with
their excellent free offerings. Fortunately, their last (sudden) price bump
seems to have allowed the creation of some good alternatives.

~~~
wwweston
While I've experienced the frustration of having a formerly free service
develop paid tiers (and policies that put me in those tiers), of all the
changes a software service can make, this is the one that frustrates me the
least, or at any rate less than:

* shutting down the service entirely because the user base never grew into customers who actually valued the service

* changing your terms of service to forbid an activity that was previously allowed, because someone discovered a use that messed up the price points and the service owners would rather forbid that than offer a reasonable price point allowing it

* moving to opaquely metered service potentially with apparently arbitrary levels of financial exposure to the client

A big price bump with a few months notice is painful (and I'm glad it's
bringing competition), but it tells me they're thinking seriously about how to
sustain/develop the product and lets both them and me explore the real value
of the service.

When it comes to Google, I'm more worried that they might just arbitrarily
mothball something on a management roadmap whim.

~~~
amelius
This is why Google's generic services should be commoditized as quickly as
possible.

~~~
thecrazyone
I agree, but is it _that_ easy? Not like no one has tried

------
linsomniac
I'm just finishing spinning up OpenStreetMap servers in EC2 as one of the last
stages of our testing, and they look great. We almost went with Mapbox, which
is probably a pretty good alternative. But as part of that move I decided to
try OSM tiles and I had them up and running in an afternoon via a docker
image, created an Ansible role for deploying virtual machines that evening,
and had tiles for our region built the next night after tuning some CartoCSS
for our needs.

We already have our own aerial tiles, built off the free NAIP imagery, and I
just went through rebuilding the 2017 NAIP tiles last week to make them higher
quality and fix some seam issues.

This combination is pretty good and lets us take control of our map tile
destiny.

References I used in setting things up:

[https://github.com/zavpyj/osm-tiles-docker](https://github.com/zavpyj/osm-
tiles-docker) [https://switch2osm.org/](https://switch2osm.org/)
[https://ircama.github.io/osm-carto-tutorials/tile-server-
ubu...](https://ircama.github.io/osm-carto-tutorials/tile-server-ubuntu/)

~~~
spapas82
I totally recommend hosting your own tile-server using open street map _if you
have the resources_. Creating your own tile-server is not as difficult as it
may sound however it is really resource intensive, especially if you want to
cover large areas. For a single EU country it shouldn't be that resource
intensive.

I have set it up on a Centos 7 server using more or less the instructions from
here [https://switch2osm.org/manually-building-a-tile-
server-16-04...](https://switch2osm.org/manually-building-a-tile-
server-16-04-2-lts/) (yes they are for Ubuntu but you'll get the idea) and
everything works great. Even if you don't really need it, I recommend trying
it to understand how it works; it has some very intuitive ideas.

Beyond the tile server I am also proposing GeoServer
([http://geoserver.org](http://geoserver.org)) for hosting the geo points on
the maps (it can integrate with PostGIS and various other datasources and
output the geo points in various different formats). You can then use Leaflet
([https://leafletjs.com](https://leafletjs.com)) to actually display the map
and points!

~~~
MattBlissett
The fastest way, if you don't have resources and don't mind being up to a few
months behind, is to use OpenMapTiles vector tiles [1].

The download is an SQLite database with a standard-ish structure (MBTiles),
you can either write a small server or use theirs.

I needed vector tiles in other projections — WGS84 equirectangualar, an Arctic
one, and an Antarctic one. Generating those took many hours on a cluster.

[1]
[https://openmaptiles.com/downloads/planet/](https://openmaptiles.com/downloads/planet/)

~~~
wpdev_63
It's not comparable to OSM tiles as it's paid for licencing for commercial
use.

~~~
MattBlissett
That's correct — I'd forgotten that, as my project has the open data use
license.

However, as an example, the one-time $40 for Colorado is likely to be much
cheaper than generating them yourself, and is probably adequate if you don't
need to keep up to date.

------
kirchhoff
It's as much as a 28x increase in price. For Street View imagery, the cost has
gone from $0.5 per 1000 views to $14 / 1000\. Unlike with maps, Street View
lacks a real alternative.

I'm seeing my own costs, for a site which I run on my own, rise from $1,500 /
month to around $30,000 / month.

Their rationale is essentially that they did not want commercial users abusing
their free tier. Before this change, they had been reaching out to such
entities individually, offering their 'premium plan' service.

The pricing for the (old) premium plan was remarkably similar to the new
pricing which now applies to everyone.

This pricing change has ended the era of Google Maps mashups / hobby projects.

~~~
google_censors
Please contact the US Department of Justice and let them know about how the
price increase is affecting you in regards to Street View. They seemed to buy
into my reasoning that Google has effectively made sure that they won't have
any Street View competition by artificially keeping prices low for years. The
more people that complain, the sooner the DOJ will probably take action. For
European users I recommend complaining to your regulators as well, especially
using Street View as your main complaint since there's no real alternatives.

~~~
jhall1468
Bing Streetside and OpenStreetCam are a thing. They just aren't very good.
There's a huge up-front investment for street view images that other companies
didn't want to take.

Microsoft invested in it, released a product and the product wasn't as good as
the market leader. That's not predatory.

~~~
dantheman0207
Other companies didn’t want to make that huge investment BECAUSE of Google.
Google offered the same service for free, which meant they had no recourse for
recouping that investment. Now that has changed, and the lack of standing
competitors is a direct result of that history.

~~~
jhall1468
Microsoft has made HUGE investments into Bing and yet Google was always
superior and Microsoft isn't exactly rolling in money with Bing.

There are several competitors, the issue at hand is they have an inferior
product. If your argument held any water, literally everyone would use TMobile
because they are so much cheaper. Reality is, a products quality matters and
Google Maps were both more cost effective AND a better product.

------
woohoo7676
I work for a startup that has mapping/routing as one of its core needs - about
a year or two ago we decided that our reliance on Google's mapping APIs was
too great and decided to work on having a switchable backup provider in case
something like this should ever happen.

With auto complete especially, we would have had a 10-20x increase in pricing
(and this is with an 'enterprise' plan pricing). As the article says, we were
basically given 2 months notice for an enormous price hike that would likely
render the business untenable. Luckily we were able to put our backup plan
into action, but changes like this really erode the confidence to use Google
(at least for mapping) in the future unfortunately.

~~~
gorbachev
I'm curious about how the conversations between Google and customers went
about this change.

I'm finding it really odd Google would just fuck their customers over this
way. They must have known how it affects startups in particular. What were the
conversations with Google like?

Just one-sided "This is the new price, take it or leave it!"? Or something
else?

~~~
mgkimsal
> I'm finding it really odd Google would just fuck their customers over this
> way.

Why is it odd?

If you're on a free tier, you're not really a 'customer', just a user.

If you're a 'startup' you probably have funding. If not, you're not the sort
of 'startup' that will fit in their calculations.

------
imhoguy
OpenStreetMap example looks superior but I think it didn't get enough research
for this article.

Anyone can use Leaflet together with OpenStreetMap for free* for heavy
commercial purposes[0] if you make your own mirror/render of OSM tiles. Also
simple reverse proxy cache[1] can keep public servers usage acceptable. Styles
can be also modified at render stage, e.g. [2].

*The cost is only your one time setup work and then any monthly hosting bill.

I encourage anyone to prefer these open alternatives and of course donate
money, time or hosting to help develop them.

[0] [https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/4669/can-i-use-
open...](https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/4669/can-i-use-
openstreetmap-in-a-commercial-product)

[1] [https://pastebin.com/brTQ68nw](https://pastebin.com/brTQ68nw)

[2]
[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/German_Style](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/German_Style)

~~~
jadavies
Agreed, if I needed an alternative to Google Maps then OpenStreetMap would be
my first stop even if it meant some work setting up my own server. That way
you largely insulate yourself from random price hikes like this.

My recent experience in various parts of the UK and one trip to northern
Finland is that the OSM is superior to Google maps anyway. And with something
like OSMAnd it's trivially easy to use offline.

------
bflesch
I think it is positive that google finally reaches a sane price point with
maps. As the comparison in the blog post shows, the whole market of map
providers looked at what gmaps is charging and kind of went along with a price
in the same category.

The higher price allows them to actually get paid for the value they provide
to various startups, which - as they pointed out in the blog post - would not
exist without these maps.

Of course, the open source approach of OSM with mostly unpaid volunteers is
again able to show its potential.

Everyone agrees gmaps has the best data imagery, plus street view - so why not
make people pay for it accordingly. I really don't see a problem with this. On
top of that people finally receive proper support from google once significant
sums are involved.

~~~
bhhaskin
Here is the problem. When Google first launched Maps it was free and they ran
all of the other competition out of business. Now that all their competition
are dead they want to charge for it. If that doesn't scream antitrust I don't
know what else does. Google has grown maps using pretty shady tactics. Their
data is only so good due to mining data from all the Android users and I bet
Street View has a lot of government money behind it.

~~~
magicalist
> _When Google first launched Maps it was free and they ran all of the other
> competition out of business. Now that all their competition are dead they
> want to charge for it._

Were there any significant competing maps APIs for the web in 2005? There may
have been (and you seem so certain I'm sure you could name them all :P), but
it's crazy to claim that there aren't far more competitors in the last 5 years
than there were back then. Just look at the article, which is literally about
all the competition available.

~~~
TheKarateKid
> _Were there any significant competing maps APIs for the web in 2005?_

Don't forget about services beyond providing Maps APIs. Google Maps basically
killed the need for a standalone GPS purchase (Garmin/TomTom) as well as
purchasing upgraded maps for existing GPS systems, including those built into
a car.

Am I complaining? No, but Google gave away for free something that once
would've been hundreds of dollars in software. I'm surprised TomTom and Garmin
weren't put out of business yet from it, but they survived on their niche
products.

~~~
magicalist
Everyone is responding about non-APIs. GP was specifically talking about
running competitors "out of business" and then raising prices on the maps API.
Google Maps itself certainly hasn't become a paid app, so I'm not sure what
point folks are trying to make.

------
wyldfire
> OpenStreetMap is not supposed to be directly used by commercial sites.

Not if I understand their terms correctly [1] [2]. Maybe there's a distinction
between the terms of the map data itself and the software published to
interact with it?

[1]
[https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright](https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright)

[2]
[https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/summary/](https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/summary/)

~~~
izacus
IIRC that's for the openstreetmap.org site, which wasn't built to answer
queries from hundreds of commercial apps (like Maps API is). You're supposed
to copy and deploy the dataset on your own servers so you don't burn bandwidth
of the OSM project.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
There's some other options too for people who want to use OSM data, but avoid
deploying it themselves. One of the ones I discovered is that MapQuest (which
it doesn't look like they considered) offers OSM data and APIs as an option
alongside the MapQuest proprietary data and APIs:
[https://developer.mapquest.com/documentation/open/](https://developer.mapquest.com/documentation/open/)

And there's several other places that offer this as well. So the advantage of
building on OSM data and APIs potentially is that you could switch providers
without losing API compatibility or having the data available change out from
under you.

~~~
Groxx
MapQuest seems like it might be 6x more expensive than the others listed in
the post, if "transactions" are the same concept:
[https://developer.mapquest.com/plans](https://developer.mapquest.com/plans)
($100 for 30,000 transactions)

(transactions aren't defined anywhere I can easily find tho, so it's possible
this isn't correct. but I don't really mind prematurely concluding that
they're significantly more expensive if they don't clearly describe their
pricing system.)

~~~
brobdingnagians
We just use them on the free tier as well; we used to pay, but I think they
upped their free tier a bit and sent us an email saying we didn't have to pay
anymore (if I recall correctly). Their API was easy to integrate; haven't had
to research mapping companies much recently, so not sure who I would pick now
based on more data.

------
rubyn00bie
Having used/managed/dealt Google Maps enterprise product, I can say, it alone
has made me _hate_ and not trust Google. These price hikes are laughable...

Support forums/forms are buried deep and inaccessible via Google search (or
were), and for technical support you're required to use some obscure login to
contact someone. People may or may not reply to you in at timely manner, and
sales reps don't give a shit about you the second you sign the paper.

Problems with their APIs or errors are impossible to get priority for... so
you basically pony up many thousands of dollars and you get a product you have
to support yourself. Not to mention back in the day the Google Maps JS had a
memory leak (we had to write our own pinning layer).

... I will note, I've noticed Google Cloud seems to be better managed with
actual semblance of support but it's the only one I've had a good experience
with.

I recommend Google's services to no one because the support is so abysmal and
now the price is too (at least for maps).

~~~
mxuribe
A big +1 on this one. In a previous role, my organization leveraged google
maps enterprise for tons of money, and the support sucked something awful.

------
spectre256
The upside of this change is it should help raise awareness and investment in
mapping products that are open source and use open data.

Off the top of my head, there are a number of companies/services that can
serve as alternatives to Google Maps, and one way or another they all
contribute to the collective quality of open source and open data map tools:

* geocode.earth ([https://geocode.earth](https://geocode.earth)) has geocoding including autocomplete based on Pelias([https://github.com/pelias/pelias](https://github.com/pelias/pelias))

* Interline can help with routing, OSM extracts, and transit data([https://interline.io](https://interline.io))

* Stadia Maps also offers map tiles and routing ([https://stadiamaps.com/](https://stadiamaps.com/))

* GraphHopper ([https://www.graphhopper.com/](https://www.graphhopper.com/)) offers routing and geocoding

* OpenCage ([https://opencagedata.com/](https://opencagedata.com/)) offers geocoding based mainly on Nominatim but also a bunch of other geocoders

* Jawg.io ([https://www.jawg.io/en/](https://www.jawg.io/en/)) offers maps, routing, and geocoding

Roughly speaking, open data allows for lower prices because investing directly
in gathering proprietary data is super expensive. Open data coverage is
getting pretty good in lots of areas, and is better than proprietary data in a
lot of developing cities (like Jakarta). It can often be updated much more
quickly. Google is notorious for taking a long time to fix errors.

Likewise open source map tools are definitely behind Google in many respects,
but there's the advantage of transparency and ease of migration if one
particular provider happens to go away, or customization is needed.

I'm sure I'm missing some services, and am happy to talk more about any of the
challenges/features as much as I know.

Disclosures: I am a co-founder of geocode.earth, and a former employee of
Mapzen, along with the founders of Interline

------
bawana
Everything google does is to generate data points. Although the rest of the
world raises prices to cover costs, increase profits, etc., Google plays with
APIs, pricing, availability as a way to generate data to model the behavior of
its customers. Simply raising prices to make more money is besides the point.
Although the price hike may have been instigated by mundane factors, the way
they do it is to understand who is using their product. They could have
sneakily inched their way up. Like the frog in the water on the stove, it wont
know its cooked until it's too late. Also Google could have (OMG) added ads to
map tiles. Or they could have a price scale that changes as you engage more of
their services (move your website to GCloud, get more map views for free). By
making this most unlikely move ( a move that would alienate customers in most
other markets) Google is implementing a limit theorem. It is trying to
segregate its customers' behavior into different groups- groups that the
customers themselves do not know exist or which they belong in. This kind of
data is what they will use to inform their future investment.

~~~
cheeko1234
On a side note, that frog in the water on the stove metaphor is a myth.

>According to contemporary biologists the premise is false: a frog that is
gradually heated will jump out.[3][4] Indeed, thermoregulation by changing
location is a fundamentally necessary survival strategy for frogs and other
ectotherms.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog)

~~~
ackchyually
Great detective work.

------
roadbeats
I would never trust Google as a business partner based on only my personal
experiences. Here is a list of problems I had with Google and its services;

\- Firebase suddenly changed its pricing, claiming that they were calculating
prices incorrectly. A tiny multiplayer game that I made for kids were not
fitting the free tier anymore, and my account was locked until I make payment.
A sudden e-mail at 6am in the morning was enough to take an app down. Customer
service? It doesn’t exist. I lost the data and moved away. The stress didn’t
worth it.

\- Kozmos (getkozmos.com) extension was taken down although it was a simple,
open source bookmarking extension (github.com/kozmos) with good description,
many HQ screenshots and also a video. I noticed it when users began reporting
they couldn’t find the extension. They didn’t even dare to reach me out after
taking it down. I sent so many e-mails, users mentioned Google Chrome on
Twitter, no response was given. Not even a single response. Again, I had no
contact to reach out and ask what is wrong and how we can fix. I was so
frustrated that I even wanted to build a new browser and ship my extension
with it.

\- Someone began impersonating me using my full name on blogger. I reported it
countless times providing fresh copy of my passport every single time, not
even a single response was given. No confirmation, nothing. The blogger is
still there impersonating me. My friends also reported it, nothing happened.

Here is three experiences. Based on this, I learnt to never trust and rely on
any Google service. The last thing is e-mail and search, and I’ll celebrate
the day I’m completely free from any Google services.

~~~
aeorgnoieang
> Someone began impersonating me using my full name on blogger

There are a lot of people in the world so the odds of someone having the same
full name as anyone else isn't that low. Was this person impersonating you
specifically beyond claiming that they have the same name?

~~~
roadbeats
I’m aware of that. It was an impersonation. Someone created a blog under my
name and posted blog posts by copy pasting sections from an e-book. Why ?
Google Ads :)

------
alrex021
In our own experience, we pleaded the fact that those dollar figures are just
beyond workable if you consider the fact that we come from a developing
country and we're faced with ~20x jump. I.e. it heavily messes with the unit
economics. The Google representative actually laughed in our face (via
Hangout).

~~~
bflesch
If you get into trouble with your unit economics given such a raise, then you
really need to think about your business model. How much value is your
business really creating ON TOP of the maps?

I don't want to be snarky, but I think many businesses don't think enough
about this issue of value creation.

~~~
foobarbazetc
Name one business that can absorb a 20x increase in a component cost.

~~~
jhall1468
Name one billion dollar business that is a success today when 80% of its
product is an API call to an externally owned service?

I get the frustration and pain with this, but let's be honest, if your
business was totally reliant on Google Maps it probably wasn't a great
business to begin with. Way too many eggs in a basket you don't own.

~~~
salvar
I a billion dollar business the only definition of a successful one?

~~~
jhall1468
Never said it was. My point was extremely successful businesses don't build
their business on an external product.

------
_hl_
I maintain a small hobby site that used to have two embedded Google maps. The
site is absolutely tiny and would have been well within Google's free tier,
and yet I happily moved away from Google Maps when they made the change.

Without warning, the two maps suddenly stopped working properly and were
covered in grey boxes. Looking for a solution in the documentation, I noticed
the new pricing model (the email notice only came after their final deadline)
and decided to try generating new API keys. Unfortunately, Google didn't
update their API console in time and I was thrown into an endless redirect
loop.

When I was finally able to obtain my new keys some days later, the two
embedded maps refused to load with an unspecific "no longer supported"
message. Google's documentation also didn't seem to be updated with any
breaking changes.

I then decided to move to OpenStreetMap, which also looks much better in my
opinion.

------
PerfectElement
Does anyone know of a good alternative to Google Places Autocomplete API? Our
app makes 25k requests per day. They had a free 150k limit per day, but now it
seems like we are going from $0 to $1,800 per month, and this is not a core
feature of our app. I wouldn't mind paying a couple hundred dollars for it,
but this price is almost what we pay for our whole infrastructure. The worst
part is that we didn't get any notice and I learned about this increase here
on HN.

~~~
spalt
Check out Azure Maps: [https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/azure-
maps/](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/azure-maps/) I believe they
have an autocomplete component....

I was investigating the Google Traffic API for an app I was working on just as
they were making this change. They went from something like 10,000 free
requests a day (which would have been plenty for my purposes) to 0 free
requests a day. "Don't be evil" my ass. Anyway, the Azure Maps (which uses
TomTom data) is much more generous.

------
pauldbau
We used to use Skobbler, which was great until they basically stopped working
and went silent. For the past 18 months, we've used Thunderforest (it's an
OpenStreetMap PaaS) and they're great. Solid uptime, good maps and the pricing
is amazingly good. Andy - the guy who runs it - is super helpful and can also
put together custom map styles (which we've taken up).

------
mastef
The weird part is that a Firebase plan for one of my side-projects suddenly
auto-updated to the paid "Firebase Blaze". The email notification stated :
"Your project was upgraded due to activity in Google Cloud"

"A user has set a new billing account for your project in the Google Cloud
Platform console. This initiated billing for your project, resulting in an
upgrade to your project's Firebase plan."

Issue with that is that I never made such a change. So how could "A user" have
made this change?

The resulting frenzy in inspecting admin and user-logs ( and checking if my
account was hacked ) just found a new billing entry called "Google Maps
Platform Transition Account" that was suddenly linked to this Firebase
project.

And I don't even seem to have permissions to inspect it.

Very confusing indeed.

~~~
dmortin
AFAIK people who did not set up billing get this transition account so their
access is not cut off completely.

[https://groups.google.com/forum/?#!topic/firebase-
talk/jWRCd...](https://groups.google.com/forum/?#!topic/firebase-
talk/jWRCd9G85VY)

~~~
mastef
It seems it was an unintended consequence of the Google Maps change and many
users were affected and confused by it [1]. If you add a Billing account to a
cloud project, Firebase will automatically upgrade you to Blaze. Since Google
Maps added a billing account automatically to your Google Cloud account, that
auto-upgraded your Firebase plan.

The response from the Firebase team [2] was that no additional charges would
occur based on this incident, and they've opened an incident report [3] in
their dashboard.

\- [1] StackOverflow Thread with users facing similar confusion
[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51373671/project-
upgrade...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51373671/project-upgraded-to-
the-blaze-plan-due-to-activity-in-the-google-cloud-platform)

\- [2] Official Firebase response [https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en-
US#!topic/firebase-ta...](https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en-
US#!topic/firebase-talk/jWRCd9G85VY)

\- [3] Firebase incident report for issue "Firebase Users who use Maps API get
auto-upgraded to Blaze"
[https://status.firebase.google.com/incident/Console/18016](https://status.firebase.google.com/incident/Console/18016)

------
megous
> Google Maps is objectively the best product on its market, in many regards
> positioned light years ahead of its competitors.

No. Google maps is an absolute, washed out turd style wise. We have much
better local competitor.

Compare this:

[https://www.google.com/maps/@50.081478,14.4272906,13z](https://www.google.com/maps/@50.081478,14.4272906,13z)
[https://mapy.cz/zakladni?x=14.4068130&y=50.0892746&z=13](https://mapy.cz/zakladni?x=14.4068130&y=50.0892746&z=13)

You can try various zoom levels, and mapy.cz is always better. Much more
detail. Much more contrast. Much more visual information. Tourist version of
the maps.

I hated using Google maps when traveling in Spain. Sadly they are the
recommended way to get public transport info. But I avoid them at all costs. I
sometimes print maps when travelling and I can imagine google maps style would
be more than useless when printed B/W on a shitty printer, while I could still
use mapy.cz maps while low on ink.

~~~
megous
I could navigate the city with a map printed even at that zoom level, but good
luck trying to do that with google maps.

That's the single most important point for the map.

I didn't consciously try to compare the maps before, but looking at the
differences now, google maps seem thoughtless and completely random at what is
highlighted, how parts of the city are named (some use names, some numbers,
for no reason), what parts are shown and what are not.

~~~
peterburkimsher
I prefer the old style of Google Maps, when roads were marked more clearly. I
used MOBAC to get offline cached tiles and use them with Galileo on my iPhone
and my own map app on my laptop.

There's a theme called OSM Bright that looks good, and when I figure out how
to set it up, I plan to switch.

------
thecodemonkey
I just wanted to add that geocod.io is now a viable alternative to Google Maps
for geocoding in terms of both accuracy and pricing. We’re going to continue
having a no-credit-card-required 2,500/day free limit, as well as the most
affordable pricing, without restrictions. Including a plan that allows for
unlimited geocoding. [https://geocod.io/pricing](https://geocod.io/pricing)

Full disclaimer: I’m one of the Geocodio founders.

------
IkmoIkmo
This is pretty insane, I think it's about time that tech companies start to
honour longer-term contracts and give more notice, even on their hobbyist
service offerings.

I mean, imagine a local grocery store who's rent would go up by 28x, 1 month
notice. Or his procurement costs? That means literal bankruptcy or closing
down his shop, virtually overnight. That's just not okay, not after years and
years of service. You need to honour contracts for at least a year at a time
and give notice. You can give two months notice on a 5% price hike, not a
3000% one.

Few other businesses operate in this manner, and those that do we tend to call
shady, exploitative, inconsiderate etc.

~~~
fireattack
> honour longer-term contracts

Do they really have such contracts to begin with?

------
jrockway
> Google Maps is objectively the best product on its market, in many regards
> positioned light years ahead of its competitors.

Why would they not increase the price, then?

Something I've realized as I've gotten older: sometimes you can't afford the
best. That is why there is a market for the cheaper options.

~~~
cup-of-tea
It's not really the best, though. The article cited to back that up compares
Google only to Apple maps and almost entirely focuses on building shapes which
add little useful information to the map. Proper street geometry seems more
important to begin with.

------
seshagiric
It's strange they haven't tried Bing Maps (differnt than Azure maps), it has a
much rich web control and support for Javascript which per the article was one
of the selection criteria.

~~~
dmortin
Bing maps does not publish pricing info AFAIK. Last time I checked it said
contact sales, no price was given.

------
r0m4n0
I’m glad I’m not the only one that has this sentiment.

The day that they enabled part of the new quota system my app stopped working
(partially my fault for not reading their email) but it turned out to be the
day before Election Day for an election app. I call in for support and they
tell me that they are rolling out the new quota system and that I have to pay
$10,000 if I need to increase my quota limit before the official new quota pay
as you go system launches. After the discussion I find out I’m not even
talking to google and it was a google partner. Somewhere down the line google
just had a partner call me instead.

Long story short I changed the API key to get me past Election Day. Decided
I’m moving off google maps asap as well.

I’m willing to pay but... can’t handle their constantly changing policies,
their support was terrible, their ask for $10,000 for a short term slightly
increased quota was absurd, their new quota system is too expensive.

------
mapperguy
A lot of people forget that Mapbox did a similar move with their $499/mo price
hike for commercial apps + pay as you go. Then later they simply switched all
of their old users to the new pricing.

Not to mention when I called to ask about Enterprise pricing years ago, it was
$7,500/yr. 9 months later it became $25,000/yr.

I have no trust in neither Google Maps nor Mapbox.

------
writepub
This is _bad_ design on the OP's part.

I hail from hardware where, for instance, Apple chooses 3 providers for it's
SSDs (SanDisk, Samsung, Intel, ...) to shield itself from price gouging,
supply issues with any single party, business concerns, etc..

However, I routinely see entire companies based on single providers despite
choice existing in the marketplace. The OP should have designed their service
around multiple mapping providers from the get go, if a serious business
relied on mapping

~~~
fenwick67
SSDs all have standard interfaces (SATA or whatever), so you can easily swap
them out. Conversely, Google Maps doesn't let you implement your own pan/zoom
layer on top of their maps API, you have to use their APIs.

Yes you could create a compatibility layer for this, but really that seems
like a lot of pre-work for something so unforeseen.

~~~
writepub
Depending on the SKUs of parts used, a single product (say MacBook pro 128GB )
may have multiple SKUs, i.e. versions of the underlying board, to accommodate
for different parts and their dependencies.

If you're under the assumption that Apple and Co don't spend the effort in
abstracting out dependencies on their hardware, your deeply mistaken.

A significant portion of engineering in hardware circles is spent in this
effort

------
iamleppert
You could always use Leaflet or even d3.geo (or cesium or whatever) and just
buy whatever tiles and data you need from the many providers who offer them.
You would only need to buy for the areas you service and could buy new tiles
annually or when you expand into new areas, just like you do with your car's
GPS. You can buy rasters and vector data from so many providers, and actually
get a lot higher quality data than Google in some cases (for some areas). This
also affords you complete control over the map style, although some providers
like Mapbox allow you a lot of control over look and feel via their StyleJSON
stuff.

Also if it really is such a big part of your product, I don't really think $80
per day (for 15k unique users) as an operational cost is all that much
honestly. And if you have a single page app, Google only charges for the first
load anyways. They may have greatly increased the prices, but it does reflect
the value they are providing and the tone taken in the article comes off as
freeloading and ignorant of the effort level and value of providing such a
service.

People also need to note that Google's javascript framework and embeddable
maps is a different product than their maps.google.com, which seems to be
higher quality both in the data and the rendering/features. The one they offer
to embed on your site appears to be a much older version (for instance it
doesn't support smooth zooming or 512x512 tiles). There are also TOS
restrictions with what you can do with their javascript framework and
widgets/API's, for instance you generally can't use other data providers or
features from other mapping/GIS services on the same page.

------
bambax
It's not hard to produce your own tiles from OpenStreetMap data and serve them
from your own server using something as Leaflet. If you only need to show
maps, and if OSM data is good enough in your part of the world (a big if),
this is the way to go.

What is very hard is coming up for a replacement of either geocoding/reverse
geocoding, or routing; many solutions exist but most don't really work or are
quite difficult to setup (IMHO).

Best of luck!

~~~
zylepe
I had very good luck with graphhopper for routing. On digitalocean it costs
about $10 to process planet.osm and the server can run on as small as a
$40/month droplet.

I am having trouble finding a good autocomplete/geo search solution though,
curious if anyone has found a decent quality provider or solution you can self
host like graphhopper.

~~~
Doctor_Fegg
Photon is the most popular autocomplete solution. Runs fine on an SSD and
there are pre-built database dumps you can download. Obviously OSM's address
coverage isn't great, which is always going to be the limitation.

------
zakk
Would it be possible to use a local copy of OpenStreetMap database, not paying
for API calls?

~~~
ethelward
Totally. You also have business offering an API to OSM data that they mirror
and host themselves.

The limitation is for the openstreetmap.org website, that is not dimensioned
to be heavily used.

------
RestlessMind
> Importantly, prices are the same from US to the Africa, despite the fact
> that revenue generation is vastly different in most developed countries
> compared to the others.

This can be understood in two ways:

1\. Cost of serving is the same from US to Africa (datacenters, network
bandwidth, engineering etc), so prices are same

2\. If #1 results in less adoption from developing countries, it is okay
because they are not the focus anyway (i.e. SV companies are focussed on US/EU
markets first). So getting rid of non-revenue making chunk of traffic doesn't
hurt much.

~~~
supernova87a
Yeah, if Google had differential pricing for something that costs them the
same to produce, I'm sure you would soon find innovative middlemen who make it
their business to source the Maps from lower cost priced countries to higher
ones.

Just like travel agents or passengers find ways to take cheaper flights from
countries or city pairs that airlines price differently to help capture more
market, even though it doesn't cost them very different to provide the
service.

~~~
nickodell
That would be true if the pricing were based on the business's location, but
not if the pricing were based on the map's location.

If you say that you're in Khartoum when you're actually in New York, you won't
get a very useful map back.

------
JeanMarcS
Some years ago, I worked on a project with a chat between people from
different countries and add a Google translate in each sentence. So two people
with different languages could exchange a bit.

It was almost ready when Google changed the rules and started charging a lot
for the service.

So I learned my lesson, and never again based a project (or a part of a
project) on a tier service, because the rules can change too fast and ruin it
all.

That what people are experiencing now with Google map.

------
axx
We switched from Google Maps to OpenMapTiles for the same reason. Running
OpenMapTiles via Docker was pretty easy. We bought a license for the Tiles
(Europe) and it was a one time fee only.

~~~
prideout
Interesting, you had to purchase a license for the tiles? I thought that
OpenMapTiles were "open".

~~~
MattBlissett
They're under something like a non-commercial license.

Three parts of a map are copyrightable.

The map data is © OpenStreetMap under their open license, but OpenMapTiles
claim copyright on the cartography of their tiles — since they aren't an exact
copy of OSM, they decide what to filter for each zoom level, what to simplify
for performance and so on.

Additionally, if you choose to use it, a map style is copyright: the design of
showing motorways in blue at 4px and cycle paths in green, for example.

For the tiles you see on OpenStreetMap.org, all three parts are under open
licenses. (And there are decisions at all three levels, for example OSM's
database contains the water features you see at OpenSeaMap.org, but doesn't
render them.)

[https://openmaptiles.com/terms/](https://openmaptiles.com/terms/)

------
dandare
I used to occasionally contribute to Google Maps with edits, images etc. That
will no longer be the case. I understand it will not have almost any impact on
Google, but the same is true for instance for elections, yet I make the trip
to voting urn almost every year.

------
zylepe
This talks mostly about road map tiles. Has anyone found any good options for
satellite image tiles? Mapbox resells DigitalGlobe imagery but would cost over
$1k/month for my site so I’m looking for an alternative with more attractive
pricing options

~~~
vinnieman232
Hi Zylepe! Disclosure, I work at Mapbox, but wanted to point you towards our
Satellite Streets tiles which combine many different data sources (including
DG), but also contain high-resolution flyover imagery in larger urban areas in
the USA.
[https://www.mapbox.com/maps/satellite/](https://www.mapbox.com/maps/satellite/)

What did you use to calculate your $1k price/month estimate for your website?

~~~
zylepe
Thanks! The quality is great but I need around 250k 512x512 satellite tile
loads per day so 250k / (4 tiles per “view”) * (30 days per month) - (50k free
requests per month) * ($0.50 per 1000 views) = $912.50 per month. Is my
understanding correct?

------
linsomniac
This price change doesn't make any sense to me or the people where I work,
unless they just want people to stop using Google Maps on other sites.

You increase prices over an order of magnitude. You give people warning. You
give people credits to cover a few more months without paying extra.

What is the end game. If you just want extra revenue, why are you giving them
the grace period to switch? Why are you giving service credits to give people
another couple months to switch?

So if they want people to stop using Google Maps (businesses, not consumers),
WHY do they want reduced use? Is there an outside source changing pricing or
licensing? I don't think so, I think Google owns the data.

------
Spectral
I work for a startup who's job is to primarily help people find places on a
map (free to users, no ads) so this change affected us by a great extent.

As I'm working through implementing google's suggested best practices and ways
to cut down on API calls, it's still quite a shocking realization that each
ONE map load (aka any user that loads our site) costs us almost a cent a piece
(0.7 per Dynamic Maps load to be exact)

[https://developers.google.com/maps/billing/understanding-
cos...](https://developers.google.com/maps/billing/understanding-cost-of-use)

------
ToBeThrownAway
Throw Away account.

The pricing tiers in this article do not include the additional levels of
volume discounts which are available if your usage is high. You need to
contact a partner or the google sales team to get details of those additional
tiers.

The small fry like these kind of people are not google's real customers - the
real customers were already paying to use the APIs before these changes
happened.

The free limits before were hugely generous. There is a cost involved in
offering the free service. If you weren't paying for it, then google was
losing money. If you stop using google for free now because of this, then they
actually _save_ money and can now dedicate those resources to supporting
actual paying customers for which there are many. Sure individual small users
are a drop in the ocean, but multiply that up by many thousands and
thousands...

Mapping is commoditized. There are many free and paid-for competitors as the
article states. If you want the extra value that google offers and chose to
stick with using them, then you need to pay for it now. I dont think that is
unreasonable. If you dont want to pay for the service and continue getting
something valuable for nothing, then go and leech MapBox/Here/someone else's
free limits instead. See how long a small company without google's resources
can support thousands of startups hammering their services & infrastructure
without any revenue to pay for it.

Good luck.

------
jsjohnst
Maybe it’s just me, but I find the MapBox version to look better and have
comparable detail to Google (in these examples anyway), and at ~10x cheaper
price, seems a no brainer.

------
Jiri_Komarek
A lot of people is choosing a map because of visual appearance. This is a
great advantage of MapTiler, which has a tool where you can with a few mouse
clicks totally change the map design, select one of 57 languages or a font for
labels[0].

Advanced users can totally change the whole map by switching on/off map
elements (schema based on OpenStreetMap tagging)[1] or add own data (MBTiles
format - both raster/vector)[2].

There is a support for multiple JavaScript APIs like Leaflet, OpenLayers,
Mapbox GL JS (source code snippets in the administration), mobile SDKs
(Android as well as iOS) and desktop software development (QT + Unity game
engine)[3].

Price calculator is available at [4].

[0] [https://www.maptiler.com/how-to/make-own-map-
design/](https://www.maptiler.com/how-to/make-own-map-design/) [1]
[https://www.maptiler.com/how-to/completely-change-the-map-
de...](https://www.maptiler.com/how-to/completely-change-the-map-design/) [2]
[https://www.maptiler.com/how-to/hosting-on-maptiler-
cloud/](https://www.maptiler.com/how-to/hosting-on-maptiler-cloud/) [3]
[https://www.maptiler.com/blog/2018/05/openmaptiles-gives-
you...](https://www.maptiler.com/blog/2018/05/openmaptiles-gives-you-freedom-
of-sdks.html) [4] [https://www.maptiler.com/google-maps-platform-
alternative/](https://www.maptiler.com/google-maps-platform-alternative/)

------
yellowapple
"If we maintained current monthly usage of both maps and Places (ie. location
search), the cost of Google Maps would be multiple times higher than the total
cost of all other infrastructure."

Well yeah. If Google Maps is the most important component in your
infrastructure (seems to be, based on the rest of the article), then it'd be
surprising for it to _not_ be the most expensive.

------
kevin_thibedeau
Why not host you own OSM data for Poland and Germany? Just reduce the detail
level and unneeded layers and deliver vector tiles. This way you are the
master of your own destiny and bear (most) of the true cost of your service
without any middlemen to charge usurious tolls. Then just make an annual token
donation to OSM for their data services and you are done.

~~~
yetihehe
My company went this route. We host own tiles for whole europe, at high level
of detail for several of our projects. Thanks to having all data in our own
database we can also do geocoding/geodecoding and we've made our own
geodecoder (simple postgres query with some some organically grown rules for
interpretation of osm data into address). That resulted in 20x faster service
for us than from google and just this geodecoding would cost as much as our
server colocation (small 8core/32gb machine with 3 cheap ssd in striping
configuration).

------
UncleEntity
I'm kind of unclear on what value they add above just using Google Maps to
find a pharmacy?

If all they do is repackage Google's data then I don't see Google as being
particularly evil in this case, why should they give "the competition" a free
ride?

I have to guess they do add something (inventory data maybe?) to make it
worthy of going to their website though.

~~~
ericd
From the screenshot, it looks like they offer inventory/pricing for the drug
you care about.

------
rch
I've had acceptable results with GeoServer, OpenLayers, OSM, and PostGIS. I've
occasionally done proof of concept work with Leaflet, but that's always turned
into Google Maps eventually.

MapBox isn't perfect yet but I'm eager to see them deliver on engineering...
it's been about a year since I've looked.

------
pjungwir
I have a native Android app I need to update before Thanksgiving. Right now
the map uses Google Play Services. I've done fairly deep OpenStreetMap
projects on several websites, but with Android I'm afraid what it will mean to
find a Google alternative. What are other people doing there?

~~~
izacus
Displaying maps on Android remains free... so I guess people are doing
nothing?

~~~
pjungwir
Okay. I've read that in a few places, but never anything that seemed quite
clear and authoritative enough to really trust it. For instance Google's docs
[1] say:

    
    
        In addition to the $200 monthly free credit, all users get:
          
          Free Maps usage for iOS, Android, and Embed
          (for displaying maps only)
    

But in a section about Dynamic Maps and Street View they also say:

    
    
        This change affects the following Google Maps Platform APIs:
        Maps JavaScript API, Maps Static API, Street View API, Maps
        SDK for Android, and Maps SDK for iOS.
    

So are maps on Android only free if the user can't interact with them?

[1] [https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/user-guide/pricing-
ch...](https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/user-guide/pricing-changes/)

------
mjwhansen
What's being missed here is that this is, in some ways, a return to normal for
Google Maps. Google only introduced pay-as-you-go Maps API access in September
2015[1]. Before that, you could get 2,500 free per day. If you needed more,
you had to sign a $10-20,000/yr enterprise contract. That was _it._ There was
no pay-as-you-go access. If you needed just 5,000 or 15,000 a day, you were
SOL. (That's a big reason we launched Geocod.io in the first place, because we
found ourselves in that unserved middle of the market.)

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2015/09/01/google-introduces-
uncompli...](https://techcrunch.com/2015/09/01/google-introduces-
uncomplicated-pay-as-you-go-model-for-its-maps-api/)

------
abduhl
Is this price increase imposed on X-sharing outfits like
Uber/Lyft/Lime/Bird/etc.?

~~~
joeblau
It's imposed on every commercial user of their API which is why a lot of
companies are also leaving Google Maps. I talked about this in another post,
but Apple[1], Tesla[2], and Uber[3] are all getting off of Google Maps. It
seems that Google raised prices to the point where it's actually cheaper to
just go and build your own maps or find a lower cost alternative.

[1] - [https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/29/apple-is-rebuilding-
maps-f...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/29/apple-is-rebuilding-maps-from-
the-ground-up/)

[2] - [https://electrek.co/2017/07/03/tesla-map-navigation-open-
sou...](https://electrek.co/2017/07/03/tesla-map-navigation-open-source-
platforms/)

[3] - [https://www.uber.com/newsroom/mapping-ubers-
future/](https://www.uber.com/newsroom/mapping-ubers-future/)

~~~
X-Istence
Apple hasn't used Google Maps in years...

~~~
joeblau
Yeah, I think that was an early sign of what was coming. The symptom then, is
the same symptom now.

------
nevi-me
I've incurred $30 since the switch for my website. At about $10 a day, I'd
have to pay at least $100 a month (after their $200) discount. By contrast, I
pay $170 for my server.

I looked at available options, and have been hesitant to switch to another.
The article mentions Mapbox's pricing opacity. I tried Mapbox a while ago, to
be surprised that map interactions (zooming and loading new tiles) counted as
usage. I used up quite a bit in an afternoon of playing around with maps.

I'm going to try host tiles myself from next month. I've embarked on a
Rustification effort where I'm seeing RAM and CPU savings by porting some
services to Rust. Hopefully I'll have spare capacity to host map tiles.

------
BruceBlacklaws
Haha - this is actually on my curriculum vitae...

"Get Country Data (GCD) A microservice that returns a country's geographical
location information.

I developed Get Country Data because I wanted to reduce the amount of costly
calls my apps were making to the Google Geocoding/Places API and I wanted to
know additional information like currency names, currency acronyms, currency
symbols (HTML entities), international telephone calling codes.

The data came out of multiple other projects I was working on. The data is not
read from any external source or a local database but rather it's kept in-
memory. The code base contains 42 472 lines of code.

Get Country Data is running in Google App Engine on PHP 5.5."

Would someone like to assist me in growing this?

------
brobdingnagians
When I looked into mapping solutions for my company, I realized pretty quickly
that MapQuest had a much more transparent and easy to negotiate process than
Google maps. It was apparent that Google's API, etc. was more advanced, but we
really didn't need that (just retrieving an image of directions in one small
sub-section of our site), so I'm glad I went with MapQuest-- which is more
than adequate for our purposes and has had price DECREASES instead of
increases during our time with them. I think there is something to say for
going for an underdog, where they are less likely to mess you over, partly
because they can't afford to do that.

------
dvfjsdhgfv
Seriously, build your own solution based on OpenStreetMap. It's a core project
we should all support as we can all benefit from it. Google's model is to
build a huge collection of data that is otherwise freely available, and then
sell access to it. You can just take OSM data, put them on your own server and
embed freely on your website, provided that you credit the project:
[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Legal_FAQ#3a._I_would_li...](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Legal_FAQ#3a._I_would_like_to_use_OpenStreetMap_maps._How_should_I_credit_you.3F)

------
prideout
For the client library, it's interesting that they are bullish on leaflet
rather than mapbox-gl-js. After playing with their respective demos, I found
that the latter seems much smoother and prettier.

~~~
aeorgnoieang
Leaflet is the open source base/core version of mapbox-gl-js; they're both
maintained by Mapbox people.

------
brentadamson
I just got done on the first stages of a maps instant answer for Jive Search
using Mapbox and think it's coming along very well. Still have a lot to do in
terms of adding directions and triggering the answer with the name of a city,
etc but am quite happy with being able to switch from a map view to satellite
view easily. Didn't take long to get up and running either.
[https://github.com/jivesearch/jivesearch](https://github.com/jivesearch/jivesearch)

------
sweb
Seems like there is a good chance that all of the Google Maps competitors will
raise their prices now too (although probably not as substantially), so it
doesn't seem like a fair price comparison until all of the dust settles there.
They all probably set their price ranges to be inline with Google Maps since
that is the most popular product and there are very few reasons why a
potential customer would go with a non-Google Maps product if it was more
expensive than Google Maps.

------
hatchoo
Wow! I've recently uploaded all my old photos to Google photos to take
advantage of the free offering. I guess I should prepare myself for the time
they start charging for it.

------
mgkimsal
Has everyone been using google maps on 'internal only' projects? Their TOS has
(AFAIK) never allowed free usage for intranet-style systems, only those which
would be free and open to the public.

Trying to look at pricing for internal use, it was always insane (starting at
$10k/year, IIRC). The price change may make it more cost effective for small
internal use cases, at the expense of open/free/public use.

------
pier25
Everyone here is assuming Google is increasing the price to win money.

Considering Google Maps is key in Google's business I wouldn't be surprised if
this was actually intended to weed out small companies and only keep the big
whales around.

I don't know the numbers but I imagine Google Maps app/web users are _by far_
the largest traffic source. Traffic from projects using the API must be
peanuts in comparison.

------
lucb1e
I would just like to note that while cost is one thing, this is not the only
factor based on which we should choose a map. Everyone complains about the
huge and sudden increase, so not before long they will lower the prices again
and everyone will be happy... and continue to put more money into this already
giant player on the market, giving them even more control over it.

------
ashtube
The problem I find is that when these alternative services see how many people
are leaving Google Maps and switching to them, those companies will then raise
their prices to "remain competitive".

Business is business and if they can see an opportunity to make more revenue,
they'll do it, whether it be Google or anyone else. It's just a matter of
time.

------
martin1975
Google Maps strength is largely due in part to their surveying of roads with
those funky looking vehicles I think most of us have seen. If one were to
develop an app that could use anyone's GPS to do the same as what Google is
paying money for... it could pose a real threat to them. A "crowdsourced" map
of sorts..

~~~
Zach_the_Lizard
I think their navigation offering is another strong moat in terms of just
plain old maps.

I'm sure Google is mining all of that sweet, sweet GPS data from people using
their navigation. I can imagine some machine learning of aeriel imagery and
some sort of GPS path clustering helps them get a lot of the last mile.

Navigation also helps them get real time traffic data and allows them to learn
how costly certain road segments are.

------
dom96
Google really needs to stop treating their customers and users so badly.

Slightly offtopic: I have been trying to get Google to fix the location of my
flat on Maps for years now. I have reported it multiple times to them and it
is still unfixed. Does anyone know a more direct way I can get in touch with
them?

~~~
lucb1e
Try openstreetmap.org, there user contributions are always welcome :)

~~~
dom96
Yes, I already made modifications on it. As far as I can tell openstreetmap is
the only map that successfully finds the location of my address.

~~~
lucb1e
Always the same. Especially when TomTom satnavs were commonplace and you had
to pay for map updates, nobody could ever find your house if you lived in a
new area, or if there were new roads in the area. Recently they built a new
tunnel here, it took a few months before friends and family stopped
complaining about Google leading them wrong. Meanwhile I use OsmAnd and have
no trouble anywhere (when driving in western Europe). Or if I forgot to update
my map, then I can still figure out my way by looking at the roads tagged as
"currently being built" on my version of the map. OSM really is just power to
the people.

------
joshe
Apple's web mapping free tier is huge:

    
    
      Apple
      250K map views / *day*
    
      Mapbox
      50K map views / month
    
      Google ($200 credit buys you)
      28k dynamic map views / month
    

Once it comes out of beta, I'm guessing their pricing will be pretty
aggressive too.

~~~
dmortin
Doesn't Apple's map require a developer account which costs money? I haven't
used them, but I seem to remember you have to pay to develop using Apple
products.

~~~
Jerry2
> _Doesn 't Apple's map require a developer account which costs money?_

$100 seems like a bargain compared to those other options.

------
rurban
There are many similar usecasess described at [https://switch2osm.org/case-
studies/](https://switch2osm.org/case-studies/) but they all decided to host
it by themselves with openstreetmap and leaflet.

------
TimTheTinker
A lot of people seem to be aware of MapBox and Apple's MapKit as viable
alternatives, but Esri's ArcGIS Online also offers a lot of options for online
maps, including allowing users to edit and collaborate on feature data.

(disclosure: I'm a developer at Esri)

------
zylepe
This mentions Apple mapkit js. This is the first I’ve seen of that. Has anyone
used it before?

I’m wary of building anything on a proprietary JavaScript api, but if they
provide tiles that can be used in leaflet or mapbox gl it might be an
attractive option.

~~~
xenadu02
MapKit JS allows 250,000 instantiations and 25,000 service calls per day on
the free tier. Currently you must have a paid developer account to use MapKit
JS.

Beyond that use this form to request an increase in your limit:
[https://developer.apple.com/contact/request/mapkitjs/](https://developer.apple.com/contact/request/mapkitjs/)

As for pricing, nothing has been announced at this time.

~~~
dmortin
How much does the developer account cost?

~~~
Jerry2
$99/year. [https://developer.apple.com/support/compare-
memberships/](https://developer.apple.com/support/compare-memberships/)

~~~
dmortin
I don't get it why they ask for money from people who want to learn their
platform. They should be happy more people want to develop for them and charge
for actual API usage instead above the free quota.

~~~
Jerry2
You can do pretty much everything with free membership: free tools etc. If you
want to sell stuff in the App Store, then you have to pay.

~~~
dmortin
I don't want to sell anything in the App Store, I just want to display an
Apple Mapkit JS Map on my website, but apparently I need a paid developer
account for this too, which makes no sense.

------
__jal
Google doesn't care about you or whatever you're building, unless you are
building something that might threaten them.

You would be well-advised to reciprocate. To the extent that third-party
services are essential to your survival, making efforts to bring it in-house,
get long-term contracts, have backup providers, etc. is simply prudent.

Dependency is control. If you build your business in someone else's sandbox,
it shouldn't be a surprise that they can hurt you at their whim, and
absolutely will do so if they can make a buck.

~~~
vocatus_gate
This is why I oppose "cloud services" at all points unless it's absolutely
something we can't do ourselves. The second you start relying on another
business for a critical service, you've ceded control of your operation. In
house is more work, but worth it in the long run.

Someone you pay to care about your stuff will never care about it as much as
someone who works and maintains it themselves.

------
MaxBarraclough
> OpenStreetMap is not supposed to be directly used by commercial sites.

If I understand correctly, it's not that the database's licence prohibits
commercial use, it's just that you're expected to host it yourself, right?

How is this a problem?

~~~
thomasfoster96
Exactly - but self hosting OpenStreetMap is quite a radical step up from
embedding Google Maps, hence why you’d get MapBox to do it for you.

------
nkkollaw
That's really a very high price compared to the competition. $7 for 1000
views!?

------
dandigangi
Absolutely insane.... 750k requests to 30k? I know its a business but wow.
Just wow.

------
ChuckMcM
And the squeeze to shore up revenue continues. It does really hurt to have
your business tied to someone else's api. This will continue to damage
startups as the big companies deal with eroding search revenue

------
ingenieroariel
If you liked Lefalet I stringly encourage you to try MapboxGl with the
Maptiler tiles and your custom styles.

Gets rid of the Mapbox logo and is a really smooth experience.

------
tomcam
It seems remarkably naive to assume a high quality business that is obviously
expensive to run would remain free.

~~~
nullicorn
The problem isn't that Google Maps is not free, nor is it that they increased
its price, but rather __how they went about__ increasing its price.

~~~
tomcam
Not classy, I definitely agree. But it should be foreseable to anyone with a
modicum of business sense

------
JumpCrisscross
> _OpenStreetMap is not supposed to be directly used by commercial sites_

What does this mean? How did Apple Maps use it?

~~~
makomk
It means that you're not meant to use their servers to supply your map tiles
(basically, image files that cover an area of map). You're supposed to either
use one of the commercial tile providers or set up your own tile rendering
servers. All the code and data required to produce tiles identical to the ones
on openstreetmap.org is open source and freely available so in principle this
isn't a big deal. This company just wanted a direct drop-in replacement for
Google Maps that didn't require running more of their own servers.

~~~
lucb1e
> This company just wanted a direct drop-in replacement for Google Maps that
> didn't require running more of their own servers.

All the while complaining about how expensive Google has become.

Hosting OSM is definitely cheaper than Google Maps, but it's a little ironic
that they didn't consider this alternative solution.

------
finnwolff
does anyone know if this development will affect users of MapKit that hosts
Google Maps within an iOS app? I've been using Google Maps through this SDK
for over a year and haven't heard anything about them charging for the service
or being able to track usage as one scales.

~~~
spaceflunky
Nope. Pretty sure usage through the SDK remains free

~~~
mthoms
For now.

------
tinus_hn
All these services are surprisingly expensive. I would have expected pricing
to be much more reasonable.

------
radisb
Isn’t it illegal for a business to offer a product/service at a price lower
than its cost?

------
PunchTornado
why would you expect prices for an online service to be different in Poland
compared to Germany or Africa?

The cost to Google is the same, no matter where the user is.

What you're asking is basicaly that people from Germany to subsidise the cost
for Poland by paying more, right?

------
mdekkers
If your product depends on another companies' product, it isn't your product.

------
Markoff
from their map comparison seem OSM and Mapbox visually the best and also with
the most information, often beating Goggle maps, reason i am using Maps.me in
mobile, Gmaps outside US are almost always inferior to other maps

------
theweb1
Google seems to be revamping its models, nice if you ask me.

------
TheArcane
Azure Maps, Apple Maps, and TomTom all use TomTom map data.

------
socialengineear
Check out TallyGo.com - SDK works like magic for all things mapping, including
turn by turn...way easier to implement than mapbox and way better traffic,
road network and turn by turn...cheaper too imho

------
holografix
Could this be a direct reaction to recent EU fines?

~~~
tomhoward
No. I started getting warnings about this at least 2-3 months ago.

------
jakeogh
It's almost a law of nature... except groups... come on google. Axe it
already. It's awful, everyone knows it. Let it go.

------
chadlavi
TIL there is a paid API for google maps, I just assumed it was free to use.
Seems pretty nickel-and-dimey.

~~~
dokem
Consider, for a moment, how much value a company like Uber gets from the
Google Maps API.

~~~
chadlavi
Charging large partners like that makes sense, but the part that seems dumb is
charging small businesses and startups at the same rate as behemoths like
Uber.

------
eightchen
Starting free then charging once you have all the users isn’t a Google Maps-
specific problem.

------
node-bayarea
Classic monopoly example

------
beerlord
I think the GDPR and EU fine is going to trigger Google - and perhaps other
large American tech companies - to actually start charging for services, now
that our personal data cannot be so easily sold. Google has been enjoying huge
profits, so is probably setting the pricing on those services at the level
required to maintain those profits.

I think what we will see in the maps arena is multiple-country specific maps
sites popping up, like a map site specific to Poland for example. Physical
businesses will then have a real hassle making sure they have a presence on
~10 different mapping sites, instead of just Google Maps.

Ironically it will make getting around Europe more difficult. I have lived in
Poland and there are a lot of business absent from Google Maps, and a lot of
cities not present on Google Maps transit.

~~~
majewsky
I'm just as in favor of GDPR as you, but I shall reserve my cheers for when
the first actual GPDR fines are handed out. For now, I'm mostly seeing annoyed
SMEs on one side who go to ridiculous lengths to be compliant in the face of
missing precedents.

And on the other side, big internet corps are implementing joke consent pages
with tons of dark patterns that clearly go against the spirit of the
regulation. I think they're pretty certain that they will eventually be fined,
but they've done the math and found that milking customer data for the X years
until the first fines are imposed is more profitable than complying now and
not risking a fine.

~~~
beerlord
I'm not really a fan of GDPR actually. I think advertising has its place, and
the more targeted it is, the better the results for everyone. The worst thing
that people can point to that this kind of advertising has caused is fake news
on Facebook, which is more of a problem with America's campaign financing
(non)restrictions than anything (and probably the fact that the candidate who
used it was quite anti-establishment).

What the internet is missing though is an alternate funding mechanism. When I
visit a site I indirectly give the owner something like $0.002 (0.2 cents)
worth of bucks from advertisers who show things to me. Why can't I just pay
the website that as a microtransaction directly? Transaction fees would eat it
all - but aggregated enough, and perhaps as part of a $10/month 'internet
content subscription', it could work in the way that Spotify does.

~~~
majewsky
> The worst thing that people can point to that this kind of advertising has
> caused is fake news on Facebook

The worst thing about targeted ads is that we're building an insane
surveillance infrastructure that the government is already eager to tap into,
and will be even more eager if one of our governments devolves into
dictatorship.

I'm from East Germany; and while I'm too young to have experienced it myself,
the Stasi is still fresh in our minds. What we build today in the name of
improved advertisement would have brought tears to Mielke's eyes.

~~~
scarejunba
If you're German, then the Snowden documents show that your government is
participating in domestic surveillance that it cooperates with Five Eyes on.
This is a few orders of magnitude more invasive than what advertisers do.

The Stasi are fresh in no one's minds or you would eliminate this
surveillance.

~~~
tobias3
We don't even need to look at the Snowden documents anymore. The largest
Internet exchange (DE-CIX) recently lost a court case which tries to get rid
of the BND wire tapping.

------
auslander
> we would be wary on taking free Google Analytics for granted

It is not free. Your _users_ pay for that with their privacy and Google gets
your user's browsing history for free. It is unfair and you _should not_ have
used it in the first place.

~~~
DarkCrusader2
Their "I am not a robot" captcha is in similar vein. If I am training your
machine learning models by manually clicking on pictures, I need access to the
trained model.

I have refused to use dozens of service which required me to click pictures to
prove that "I am not a robot" and sent the service provider an email informing
them of my decision. I would urge everyone to do the same.

~~~
auslander
This, plus most sites side load content from major CDN's, like
ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery and log the requests. You'll need
additional extension besides VPN, Private Browsing and uBlock Origin -
Decentraleyes:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/decentraleyes](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/decentraleyes)

It's amazing how much you need to break free from tracking, but I'm on the war
path :) Btw, taking the red pill will cut you off Facebook and Google
accounts, unless you provide real phone numbers.

Matrix movie: "You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your
bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay
in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes"

------
auslander
Good lesson, I'd say. My experience designing big production systems - is not
to rely on any third-party for your mission-critical core operation, even if
it's harder, you have control.

Google is actually devouring Internet as we speak, like a black hole:

\- email. Keeping your own server unblocked by Gmail is a loosing battle. I
use iCloud, but it still goes through Google for my Gmail and G-Suite peers.

\- Search - monopoly. Analytics - monopoly.

\- Android. Try make a phone with open source Android without Google apps and
licensing.

\- Companies and schools move all its people to G Suite (Google).

Ten years later 'Internet' will be replaced by 'Google' in dictionaries, as it
happened to 'googling'. GSP = Google Service Provider (former ISP), GETF =
Google Engineering Task Force (former IETF) :)

------
b212
There's a small Polish startup that helps people find nearest pharmacies with
given drugs.

They did pretty nice analysis and found out their whole infrastructure costs
$1300 a month and they would have to pay additional $5000 for Google Maps
alone (right now GM costs them nothing).

Looks like GM will be ~10x more expensive to them than Mapbox or MapTiler,
here's the original article (in Polish) translated by Google (sic!):

[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pl&tl=en&js=y&prev...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pl&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gdziepolek.pl%2Fblog%2Fpozegnanie-
z-google-maps&edit-text=)

Looks like many folks who leeched on GM's free plan will move to alternatives
so maybe this dick move will turn around and became actually a good thing,
would love to see more competition in the area and right now Google Maps is
years ahead of competition: [https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-
moat](https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat)

~~~
edgarvaldes
This thread is precisely about that company

~~~
tartrate
It's a good TL;DR of the article but I'm not sure it's intentional :)

------
dingo_bat
It seems to me that in simplifying the cost structure, Google has excluded
some use cases completely. Enterprise pricing should be as complicated as
possible, to closely mirror the actual costs incurred by the service provider.

Treating every map load the same even though one user can move around the map
a lot, zoom out till he can see the earth, etc. is not smart. A much better
metric is number of tile loads, so that cost corresponds with usage.

------
patrickg_zill
Wonder if a company like Garmin will be jumping into the market given Google's
behavior.

~~~
lucb1e
I wonder when we realize that, whoever the current big guy is, having a single
company be the big guy means they can pull this kind of crap. There are two
ways to avoid this: have multiple good options at any given time (and make it
easy to switch), or have a non-commercial entity be the main source of data.
My inner hacker wants the latter, but I guess either would be okay.

------
finagle
nepalesenapotheke.de srilankerapotheke.de

------
synesso
TallyGo employee here. We have free map impressions for customers of our
navigation SDK.

~~~
voltagex_
If you're going to promote your product you should probably have a link in
your comment.

Few things:

* Who's your mapping provider?

* Why do I need to sign up to even see example code?

* Why would I use this over something like MapBox?

* What's your accuracy like in Australia?

~~~
synesso
I'm an employee. It's not my product. I didn't include a link because I
thought it would be too spammy. It's tallygo.com.

At this time, we are a mix of mapbox + our own data.

I don't know why you need to sign up to see sample code. I'll give that
feedback.

For mapping you'd use it over mapbox because it comes for free with your
navigation package. For navigation you'd use it over mapbox because it has
better turn-by-turn instructions, routes and traffic estimates.

The map is accurate throughout the world. The navigation product is specific
to North America at this time, but it will expand.

------
Mariehane
I wonder if this price hike has anything to do with the EU antitrust fine
Google received recently.

~~~
equasar
I'm pretty is a percent of the reason why they decided this absurd price
increase.

~~~
Moru
Thats ok, there are plenty of other ways to get a free map and analytics on
your homepage. And the added benefit of not handing your users data over to
google. Planned for first thing after the vacation.

------
duxup
Just as a n00b who thought the fact that I could make these silly custom maps
"OMG look the pins are silly things now!" on Google Maps was super cool... I'm
disappointed.

I get that anything I do on my own is likely below the threshold.... but at
the same time I feel like this likely will somewhat reduce maps usage and what
if any bragging rights I might have with an employer (if I can find one ;)).

For me I maybe wonder if I'm going to make a hobby app that I should look at
alternatives instead, or just quit dorking with Google Maps in my spare
time...

Granted this is all very individual light stuff, but I wonder if it is a
consideration people will have considering how dramatic and sudden the price
change has been.

