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Gah, this is so confusing, I've got small sites developed for clients many many years old running various maps based stuff off API Keys in my account, now I hav

Gah, this is so confusing, I've got small sites developed for clients many many years old running various maps based stuff off API Keys in my account, now I have to add MY billing information to them or get the client to set themselves up a google cloud platform account and developer and project and keys and ...... Good grief, that's totally impractical to have website administrators, my clients, to do that, even I as a seasoned developer hate trying to navigate around the complex labyrinth that is the Google developer console stuff. It's all so complicated. I just want a page I can point my customer to, "go here, type in your domain name, enter your credit card number in case you need to be billed by Google for usage, and tell me the API key it spits out". On top of that, it's still of course totally open to abuse and quota theft, referer checking is not security. I can see a burgeoning black market in api keys forming.

lukeqsee 9y ago
We support cases like this by using domain names as authentication. We plan to eventually support automatic spinning off of domains into their own account (e.g., for your clients after you're finished with a project). But for now, they could set up their own account with their domain and it would just work for you as a dev. If you're curious: https://stadiamaps.com https://stadiamaps.com. Please email me at luke@stadiamaps.com if you're interested.
n_u_l_l 9y ago
It is totally hidden but you don’t actually have to add a billing account if you’re sure that you stay below the $200 monthly usage. You can find it here: https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/user-guide/pricing-changes/ https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/user-guide/pricing-ch... "Is a credit card or billing account required?" I also experienced similar issues when I was still freelancing and managed the hosting for some clients. I wanted to host clients on Google Cloud or AWS but letting clients make an account they are unable to manage looked like a bad idea to me. If their website gets a lot of unexpected (maybe unwanted) traffic, they get a large bill which they blame me for. Because of this reason I had to go with shared hosting for small clients, and Heroku for companies that cared about uptime so everyone always knew what the costs are. Something like billing limits would fix this. So freelancers could host their clients websites on their own account (or using AWS organizations) and charge their clients the billing limit for a year upfront.

lukeqsee 9y ago

We support cases like this by using domain names as authentication. We plan to eventually support automatic spinning off of domains into their own account (e.g., for your clients after you're finished with a project). But for now, they could set up their own account with their domain and it would just work for you as a dev. If you're curious: https://stadiamaps.com https://stadiamaps.com. Please email me at luke@stadiamaps.com if you're interested.

n_u_l_l 9y ago

It is totally hidden but you don’t actually have to add a billing account if you’re sure that you stay below the $200 monthly usage. You can find it here: https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/user-guide/pricing-changes/ https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/user-guide/pricing-ch... "Is a credit card or billing account required?" I also experienced similar issues when I was still freelancing and managed the hosting for some clients. I wanted to host clients on Google Cloud or AWS but letting clients make an account they are unable to manage looked like a bad idea to me. If their website gets a lot of unexpected (maybe unwanted) traffic, they get a large bill which they blame me for. Because of this reason I had to go with shared hosting for small clients, and Heroku for companies that cared about uptime so everyone always knew what the costs are. Something like billing limits would fix this. So freelancers could host their clients websites on their own account (or using AWS organizations) and charge their clients the billing limit for a year upfront.