Google Maps API Becomes 'More Difficult and Expensive' (govtech.com)

Government Technology reports: On July 16, Google Maps is going to make it more difficult and expensive to use its API, which could make custom maps that rely on the service less sustainable or even unfeasible for the people who made them... First, Google Maps is requiring all projects to have an official API key in order to work. If a user doesn't have a key, the quality of the map will likely be reduced, or it could simply stop working. Second, API keys will only work if they are attached to somebody's credit card. Google will charge that card if users exceed a certain number of API requests, which is different for different services. Google will provide users a free $200 credit toward those costs each month...

There are a couple places where the changes might have more of an impact. One is in the civic hacking space, where people often work with government data to create niche projects that aim for low costs, or are free so that as many people as possible can use them... "I think that's what scares people a little bit, it certainly scares me, this thought of having this API out there and not knowing how many people are going to use it," said Derek Eder, founder of the civic tech company DataMade. "I don't want to suddenly get a bill for $1,000."
There's at least three Open Source alternatives, and Geoawesomeness.com lists nine more.

Slashdot reader Jiri_Komarek also points out that Google's move was good news for its competitor, MapTiler. "Since Google announced the pricing change the number of our users increased by 200%," said Petr Pridal, head of the MapTiler team. "We expect more people to come as they get their first bill from Google."

Comments

Stupid users..

[thesupraman]

They haven't killed competitors.

I can actually understand why they did something like this, although I would have suggested a rate limit on a 'free' tier instead.

An example is, I heard a complaint from a city public transport agency. They had a phone app using this, and were railing against the new charges.
Turns out their app, which people have open for planning routes, and sitting waiting for busses/trains/etc, is written insanely and was re-requesting EVERYTHING
every 5 seconds while the app was running, so they were generating millions of API calls, to service a few thousand users...

They were trying to make a big public fuss about this, claiming google was evil. Perhaps they should just fix their damn app.

Of course the new solution isnt great either, a rate controlled free tier would be sensible, plus clear ways to limit your total exposure.
But I suspect there are a hell of a lot of maps API 'apps' that are just as retarded, and that the traffic/cost has become huge enough that they decided to do something.

Google maps stinks anyway

[MrL0G1C]

Serioualy, 1 out of 5 because:

1: You can't see fuck all in daytime outside - a place where you're quite likely to be using a MAP ffs. The contrast is abysmal, everything is light pastels, what kind of utter fucking moron says yeah, that's a good idea for a map. (yes I have a bright screen, but sunshine is much brighter).

2: Google uses street codes instead of road names, people in my country don't use these codes anywhere other than on motorways and large A-roads. The streets here have the road names at the end of most roads, they do not say shit like B2673.

3: Roads without code don't show names at all without a lot of faffing about zooming in and out and panning until you (sometimes) find the name. It's a complete waste of time.

4: Google deliberately never ever remembers anywhere you ever went in any useful way, sure I expect they actually remember everywhere you went and store that forever. Stick in a postcode, close the app, open the app 10 seconds later, stick in the very same post code and Google Maps has a memory worse than a dead geriatric.

5: Searching for locations can be piss-poor slow and will happily fail. It's pretty obvious google doesn't like people using it's service for free, the more you use it, the slower it gets and fuck you if you're not using the latest version of google maps or android.

6: It crashes often. About 1 in 5 times for me.

7: A new one, shitty annoying notifications - Adverts for things you pass on the map. The last thing you want when your navigating is your phone having random notifications, I've wasted time on several occasions pulling over to make sure it's nothing important, thanks google you arseholes. I did manage to turn these off (I think).

8: Extraneous bandwidth killing unwanted map features you can't turn off, IE 3D buildings. I don't need that.

9: That's just off of the top of my head, there's no doubt more.