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Google Maps To Charge For API Usage
RdeCourtney writes "The BBC is reporting that from 1 January 2012, Google will charge for the Google Maps API service when more than the limit of 25,000 map "hits" are made in a day. Google is rumoured to be charging $4 per 1,000 views in excess of the limit. Google maintains the high limit of 25,000 free hits before charging 'will only affect 0.35% of users.'"
Does openstreetmap.org have any limits on map access?
http://www.openstreetmap.org/
Real quick way for them to get dropped like a bad habit, people on the Internet aren't going to pay for such things.
Queue incoming stream of slashdotters who will be outraged at their Google's failure to provide a quality service for free, followed by waves of tinfoil hats shouting "you are the product!"
You can pay for extra space in gmail, too, but we don't hear to many complaints about that (I'm rapidly approaching my limit). They are, admittedly, providing a service for which you would otherwise have to pay. If it's big deal, link your map to the plain Google site. Oh, you don't want to un-brand your map and keep people captured on your site? Excuse my while I shed a tear.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I have no problem with Google charging for the API. Please remember that this only cover high use sites which wish to offer a service on the back of the considerable work and expense Google has put into maps. My only real concern is that as a Google 'customer' I have always found that support is something they do poorly, and this can be forgiven when you're not paying for the service. If Google uses the money to improve the service, assist customers then I have no issue with them making a profit off of the back of that.
Currently Google's business model is to sell advertising based on intensive profiling of us users. Anything they can do to diversify is welcome.
...because of Siri no doubt.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
So would this affect corporate users such as with Apple's Maps app on iOS? If so, I guess that could be another reason for their recent maps company acquisition.
I don't think announcing the prices counts as being rumored.
Do I have to start paying $1 for every 100 searches I do over 1000 a month?
Not to mention with that horribly awful instant search BS they keep pushing, I can only imagine how much crap like that would hit people's wallets.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Google is rumoured to be charging $4 per 1,000 views in excess of the limit. Google maintains the high limit of 25,000 free hits before charging 'will only affect 0.35% of users.'"
Provide the data behind that and people might believe it.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
If they would let the developers choose to add sponsored results within the map (with a category to pick so as not to compete), maybe they can offset the price.
I wouldn't have a problem if my map showed Taco Bell or Red Box locations.
Of course, I guess the app or website could filter the sponsored results out, but I'm sure Google's smart spiders and human TOS verifiers could detect it and remove the free access. If only 0.35% of their API users are affected, it's not like they've got that much work to confirm proper TOS compliance.
They were basically running a charity by allowing people to download maps to their GPS devices with no ad revenue in return, and all that data can't be cheap to store and deliver.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Google makes APIs. They make software and services, but at the end of the day, they make their systems available via APIs. No other company does it quite as well as Google (except, say Amazon). It really is no surprise here: Microsoft makes software to run on actual machines. Apple makes shiny hardware. Google makes Internet-scale APIs.
They've obviously got to cover costs. Plus, it being Google, there won't be the usual wave of "OMG! Evil Corporation X dares to charge for their evil service Y! Which is inferior than FOSS project zzzzzzz anyway" zealot posts here - everyone will be mellow.
#DeleteChrome
Who is charged for this overage? If it is the guy who uses the application or is it the "application writer"?
Reading the announcement link, it sounds like the "application writer/server" pays. But I don't get it ... If my web server serves up a html/js page that calls the google maps v3 api, which doesn't require an api key, and the end user user's web browser executes the javascript calling the metered google api, how does google identify the application writer/server?
I just hope they don't feel the need to ruin it like Reader and the Google Home page revamp. You have to wonder how long it'll be until you have to go to G+ to get your map data?
Dear Google,
We ( http://www.plml.org/ ) use many of your API services for our tools. Recently, we had to switch from the Google Search API to Bing's Search API due to the new fee-for-access system. Bing works, but does not yet deliver the same quality of service that teachers and students expect. We hope they improve, but so far, have seen little action from their API team.
With respect to the Google Search API: While our sites (for instance, http://www.boolify.org/ ) do utilize more than the maximum number of hits per day for the free API access ( with Search, it's just 100! ) we do not have the ability to pay the fees associated with the usage we incur.
Nonetheless, it is our mission to continue to provide free access to the educational tools we develop (there are many others like us), and struggle to continue to provide tools that schools expect to be of high quality, while balancing that ability with what we can provide within existing technological services.
The other grant programs you provide to nonprofits are essential (AdWords, Apps Enterprise, etc). We, and many others, make use of these grants daily, if not every minute, of our operation.
So, as you roll out additional fee-for-access programs, we humbly ask that you extend the grants program to cover these services as well. A little leeway on your part will go a long way toward helping us deliver on our social mission!
Many thanks,
Staff @ Public Learning Media, http://www.plml.org./
I wonder how they are going to enforce this. If it's for one website, can I have multiple secondary domains like mymap1.com, mymap2.com etc.. and then from a primary domain mymain.com, redirect to one of my secondary domains (a different one each time) without hitting the limit?
They already cover this case:
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/faq.html#usagelimits
Apple. Oh wait, that's one word.
-- Flame me and I will happily flame you back. Bring it!
Raising rates will kill users' ambition and discourage them from working.
Raising rates will punish successful people who use maps for being successful.
Raising rates is always a terrible idea—the problem is using maps in the first place.
Rates are a form of theft: Google has no right to take our money away.
Adapted from
time.http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-09-18/news/30171442_1_top-tax-rate-terrible-idea-middle-class
#OccupyMountainView
Part of why I love Google so much is because they serve high quality, account based browser utilities. Their tools are some of the most convenient ever. This is not at all a huge deal and only seems like one at a first glance. It is upsetting that Google will charge anything for any of their utilities especially because of the extreme revenue they get from their search engine but with a little more thought, $4 for ever 1000 hits over the initial limit of 2500 is an extremely minor obstruction of comfort to balk at.
Unless, of coarse, they mean they will be posting the charge for ever overall hit.
Google paid "an undisclosed amount" but probably a lot for Keyhole, they bought exclusive online image rights from a second satellite image provider, streetview, the street maps themselves... this stuff's gotta cost a lot of money. 25,000 hits *a day* is a LOT of hits, I really don't think someone is going to get this many hits on their personal website, and Google's FAQ seems to be aware of slashdot effect (it says "If my web site or application becomes suddenly popular, will my maps stop working? No. Your maps will continue to function. However if your application qualifies for and consistently exceeds the published Maps API usage limits" blah-be-blah.) In conclusion, this stuff does cost money, and I think charging for that heavy of usage is fair.
I have an Android phone so I have free maps and navigation!
Anyone who produces that many views most likely has multiple IPs. I can only see them limiting to 25k per IP, but then any heavy user would find a way to balance it out across all their address space. Of course, any "light" user who uses more than 25k views a day would probably find 0.4 cents per view cheaper than any extra development effort.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
apply for a free premier license and spend your time working on boolify so it actually does work. Wow that was painful
I have worked with two large nonprofits that rely on Google Maps to varying degrees, in some cases for mission-critical purposes and in other cases for ancillary tasks.
From my developer's POV, Maps API is easy to use and the terms of service are more than fair, given that they're providing a tremendous service. Google Maps is one of those life-changing technologies (which Google did not invent, of course, but which they have perfected more than their competitors, IMO) and I wouldn't take it for granted.
Both applied for (and one has received) the 'Premier' grants. Both dealt with the same single Google employee, who was very helpful, but who would sometimes take months to reply to an email. My sense is (and this isn't surprising) that Google is so overwhelmed with these applications from non-profits that they just don't have the people to process them all. I'm sure they're doing something about this but it was a little surprising to see such a popular program (the Nonprofits premier grants) run by a handful of people.
I'm glad they're moving to this model, though. I'd rather build in the Maps API to a client application and start getting alerted when we're going over limits than just have it shut down or refuse a request.
This is the year of Open Street Map on... every device!!
:)
I run into this problem when trying to use GPS on a Linux netbook. The author of OSS got cease and desist from Google for using their maps. The Open Street Map is available, but it is largely neglected in US, most likely because Google Map is available and is "free". At the same time OSM is updated and loved in Europe, they say.
So please make sure that your neighborhood is charted correctly, so we are prepared for when Google eventually turns evil
It's not that bad being sceond :P
Shit... my Poe's Law FSM just started to cry...
I set up Google maps on a site a couple of months ago, and I can tell you that this restriction is already in place. Even then their TOS said that if you had over 2,500 hits in a day, you needed a Premier account. My client contacted Google and they were told that a Premier account would cost them $10,000.
So, rather than charging more, this newer scheme looks like it actually be cheaper than before, for most of those who have to pay.
Obviously, all members of Google's account management and support teams read Slashdot, and this is exactly the right place to ask for this...
http://openlayers.org/
http://osm.org/
This is the Hello World of Google Maps. If you check the source code you see that there are no API keys (it's Google Maps API V3) so what happens after a page like that is loaded for the 25,001th time in a day? Are they keeping track of all the HTTP Referers and count if a given domain has generated traffic over the free quota and eventually stop serving maps for it? They don't need to do it in realtime but that's going to be a big query and/or a big queue. I'd really like to know how they implemented it.
And the horse they rode in on.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Dear Business,
We just switched from you to your competitor because they offer their service for free. It turns out, though, that their product sucks and we like yours better. Would you consider giving us your superior product for free. You've already granted us free access to some of your other products, and we use an absolute boatload of those, taxing your infrastructure far more than you allow for normal entities. We'd like to do that for all of your other pay services.
Thinking of the children,
Your local non-profit
(Sorry, your letter struck me a bit odd. In full disclosure, I offer professional services and am asked from time to time to provide my services for free. I also happen to sit on three non-profit/charity board of directors, so I'm keenly aware of n-p finances.)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Shouldn't you pay a little? This is for people who make money of them, not you for looking up where you are going.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
We are the 99.65% Occupy Google Maps, spread the... wait...
Then when you get hooked, you get screwed.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Yes, and I'm sure Bing loves you misspelling their name. It's little things like that which hurt credibility, so I'd strongly suggest you give your site the once over looking for any other glaring deficiencies.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Heya, That's one way to read it, and I appreciate the interpretation. But, as far as I can tell, Google genuinely does want to do good - they provide *great* support for some things. My hope was to point out others that might extend their impact further. Basically, it's a way of saying hey -- some people used what was provided at no charge (formerly) for causes that didn't turn revenue, but did some social good. The API changes had a big impact on us (even if, for commercial entities, it was a small deal). Is there a better way to state it?
App store link enforced on Chrome, now pay to use map API, I guess the time for freebies its coming to an end and Goggle is making more and more clear that there is no such thing as a free beer.