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Announcing the Pollen API
- thinkingemote 3y agohttps://mapsplatform.google.com/maps-products/pollen/ https://mapsplatform.google.com/maps-products/pollen/
- themedes_ 3y ago[flagged]
- evujumenuk 3y agoIt's both funny and sad how "Google" has become synonymous with "time-limited". You start treating a new API like a pop-up store downtown — it's okay or even good to be interested, but relying on it would be folly.
- frou_dh 3y agoHow bored are you to register an account just to post that formulaic comment?
- kubb 3y agoIt could be a black PR effort of a competing company. Remember Scroogled? That, but a bit more subtle.
- moooo99 3y agoCould be, but unfortunately, this isn't an entirely unreasonable question regardless. Given Google's track record, I would be very hesitant to integrate new APIs right after launch.
- fullstop 3y agoI completely agree with you, but there is a kernel of truth to what they say. I would be apprehensive about using this API for anything serious.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sgammon 3y ago[flagged]
- VeejayRampay 3y agovitriolic comment voicing your own little issues that adds nothing to the conversation about the topic at hand
- pritambaral 3y ago1. Threads on HN aren't expected to remain on-topic, especially top-level comments (like the one you're replying to). HN's content guidelines place no restriction on comments to be on-topic, let alone decide what on-topic is. 2. I see no vitriol in your parent comment. Sarcasm yes, but employing sarcasm alone does not make speech vitriolic. 3. You commented _about_ your parent, rathering than responding to the content of it, adding nothing to the conversation it started. 4. That you interpreted your parent's sarcasm much more strongly — as, instead, vitriolic — perhaps voices one of "your own little issues".
- criddell 3y ago> HN's content guidelines place no restriction on comments to be on-topic, let alone decide what on-topic is. Do you really think there needs to be a guideline saying "comments should be on-topic"? Wouldn't you assume that based on both the guidelines and how we generally conduct ourselves in the comments? The guidelines don't say anything specifically about racism but surely you would agree that racist comments have no place here, right? But despite all that, the guidelines do ask us to avoid generic tangents and to not post shallow dismissals. I'd say the comment at the top of this thread qualifies on both counts. Now we're many messages deep here arguing about what belongs and that itself is a violation of the most important guideline: this is boring to read.
- sgammon 3y agoAre you comparing my very reasonable comment to racism? Or… ? Just because you think a comment isn’t relevant doesn’t mean others do.
- criddell 3y agoI initially thought Google partnered with Matthew Butterick on a publishing system? then clicked through and was a bit disappointed.
- daedlanth 3y ago[dead]
- Waterluvian 3y agoI’m a bit surprised to see a single geodata theme packaged as a whole “thing.” And goodness the marketing fluff is quite repetitive given they have so little to talk about. Call me jaded but it feels like someone’s really announcing, “I shipped something! Give me my promotion!” > Our Pollen API is based on a model that calculates the seasonality and daily amount of pollen grains on a 1x1 km2 grid in over 65 countries worldwide, supporting an up to 5-day forecast, 3 plant types, and 15 different plant species. The model uses various inputs like land cover, climatological data, annual pollen production per plant, and more to deliver reliable output predictions of the local pollen level and exposure risk. The maps look like what you get when you throw Ordinary Kriging at a dataset of very limited coverage. I’d be skeptical of this model without thorough analysis.
- Raed667 3y agoI'm disappointed as i thought they'd use actual sensors instead of guessing using old data.
- INTPenis 3y agoYeah same here, a much more challenging project would be to aggregate data from the thousands of individual pollen services in various countries. I know of at least two here in Sweden. Isn't this what we should use AI for?
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago> Isn't this what we should use AI for? Nah, this is just data collection and statistics.
- INTPenis 3y agoNo I mean we should use the potential flexibility of AI to gather data from many varying APIs that might change at any moment without prior warning. Some of these national pollen sites may not even have an API, may require scraping.
- 3y ago
- londons_explore 3y ago> According to the World Health Organization, up to ⅓ of the global population suffers from allergic rhinitis, Has anyone yet figured out why so many humans suffer from an allergy to many natural plants which we have lived around for millions of years? It looks like the first documented case of Hayfever was March 1819[1], and at the time it was considered a very unusual and rare affliction. When and why has it now become so common? [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3110966/#:~:text=March%201819%20Bostock https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3110966/#:~:tex...,
- londons_explore 3y agoSome allergies are triggered by a disease[1]. It is possible that hayfever is an outcome of a disease which has become common since 1819. The disease may have no other symptoms, and hay fever a symptom in only some people, and therefore be very hard to track. [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2023/p0727-emerging-tick-bites.html https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2023/p0727-emerging-tick-...
- tonyedgecombe 3y agoOr a virus. A lot of autoimmune diseases are thought to be triggered by a virus.
- n2d4 3y agoAccording to Wikipedia [0], Hayfever was already described in the 10th century. It is less common among people who grew up on a farm and more common with rising temperatures and air pollution. Hayfever is also significantly more common in urban areas. Assumably all of these factors play a role in the prevalence today, though that doesn't rule out the existence of other undiscovered factors (e.g. a disease, as some people speculated). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allergic_rhinitis#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allergic_rhinitis#History
- jkukul 3y agoThere was a very interesting discussion recently on this topic. [1] There are various hypothesis: * changes to gut microbiome composition due to modern diets and overuse of antibiotics * excessive cleanliness and hygiene. The "hygiene hypothesis" suggests that lack of exposure to diverse microbes leads to improperly trained immune systems * increased exposure to chemicals, plastics, and pollutants that may disrupt immune function * Cesarean sections and formula feeding rather than vaginal birth and breastfeeding [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37195905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37195905
- captn3m0 3y ago> Pollen data presents a unique opportunity for businesses–whether it’s an opportunity to build brand loyalty and trust, increase engagement and product value, or become a catalyst for a more resilient community. Such a perfect example of Google-speak. Every data point is an engagement hack.
- piva00 3y agoAs time passes it feels like Google slowly morphs into a Hooli-esque enterprise. Google's corpspeak has become insufferable...
- rvnx 3y agoSometimes the company is a parody of itself. I got shouted at by People Operations for saying "Merry Christmas"...
- danjc 3y agoIt's such a ridiculous statement that without context you'd have thought it was a parody of corp speak.
- LastCovidWave 3y agoIt's not allergies. It's COVID.
- neom 3y agoAccuweather API is pretty decent and relatively affordable(free) for personal use: https://developer.accuweather.com/apis https://developer.accuweather.com/apis
- jug 3y agoI think this should have been the link: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/maps-platform/going-beyond-map-introducing-environment-apis https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/maps-platform/going-b... It's a new initiative with multiple new API's: Solar API, Air Quality API, Pollen API. And that link gives an overview for them all.
- a_square_peg 3y agoSolar I sort of get since I don't think anyone does it the scale like Google Sunroof, but not sure what the added value is for Google to create the APIs for Air Quality and Pollen? There are service providers and models that do these already at global scale (e.g. https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/air-quality https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/air-quality & https://silam.fmi.fi/ https://silam.fmi.fi/).
- lgeorget 3y agoIf a company already uses Google APIs, integrating a new API from Google may be easier than integrating a new provider. So for Google, there's certainly a market, even if they have to source the raw data.
- dylan604 3y agoBut if Google introduces something new, there's a strong likelihood that it will be killed off in 18 months. Going with a new provider that has been around longer than that would be a much more logical idea.
- vineyardmike 3y agoThis is certainly true for consumer products, but it’s a lot less true for enterprise. Google Cloud had a few missteps with product shuttering (domains?), but largely google has a better track record serving enterprise customers. Google has to slowly build better trust among customers, clearly. But “new provider” may sound like it’s logically obvious but the benefits of an established relationship goes deep into the complexities of businesses managing contracts and payment relationships. It’s a huge effort for random teams in big companies.
- koliber 3y agoWhen allergies act up, we need to start polling the pollen in Poland.
- promiseofbeans 3y agoNo Aotearoa coverage :(
- waddup_ 3y agoAt the surface this looks cool but I wonder if the data is actually reliable. That heatmap is pretty.
- capableweb 3y agoThe title mentions "Providing actionable info" but I don't see what's actually actionable here? The text also mentions "Actionable tips to minimize pollen exposure", what besides avoid going outside or wearing a mask could you actually do?
- carstenhag 3y agoI don't know about their tips, but generally you should start medication some weeks/days before exposure.
- bilekas 3y agoIf this does take off, it might actually turn out to be extremely dangerous. Lets say you buy into all the marketing nonsense about how it can value add to your business and maybe even someone decides to create something genuinely useful for people with crippling alergies, maybe different routes, or some kind of alert system. Then Google in their usual way shuts down the api service with no recourse or alternative. Now you've left people who were using it, maybe heavily during certain seasons etc, stranded. I agree with the other posts, this smells of a "POC" that was pushed forward to demonstrate work done. Will be interesting to see how good the data is, but moreso how long the service will last.
- thearrow 3y agoI’m guessing this is a direct result of their acquisition of BreezoMeter: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/breezometer https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/breezometer
- cvp 3y agoYep, and the Breezometer homepage now redirects to Google’s map platform page (subpages still seem to work, such as https://www.breezometer.com/air-quality-map/air-quality/united-states/san-francisco https://www.breezometer.com/air-quality-map/air-quality/unit...) and they had previously announced plans to sunset the Breezometer app in September. Breezometer is also the air quality data source for Apple Maps and I’m sure other weather apps too, so assuming the pricing is comparable there’s probably a decent business here just from existing customers.
- graupel 3y agoThe Air Quality and Pollen data in these APIs are from Google's fairly recent purchase of Breezometer, the same company Apple uses for AQI across iOS weather products.
- sauercrowd 3y agoGoogle: We're shutting down Google domains cause we need to focus. Also Google: Here's the pollen API you guys have been asking for for ages.
- rinze 3y ago"Quick! Use this in your app before we shut it down!"
- bastawhiz 3y agoCame to the comments for this. A pollen API smells exactly like the sort of product that Google will rug in a few short years when it inevitably turns out that nobody is building apps that need pollen data.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- whalesalad 3y agoBefore clicking I assumed this was going to be some kind of fancy LLM API with a fun codename but nope it’s literally an api for pollen data.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cumshitpiss 3y ago[dead]
- tech-historian 3y agoFan of these interesting APIs, even if they feel experimental. Google also used to have a Flu Trends API [1], based on search query data in 25 countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Flu_Trends https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Flu_Trends
- seatac76 3y agoAny word on pricing? Would love to use it a personal app.
- krzyk 3y agoOK, Pollen API, but maybe also add this to google maps so people can use it now, not wait for others to integrate it?
- h1fra 3y agoSo random (but useful). With this name I was expecting an AI Model. Is there a theory that at some point we will have an API for every environmental event?
- miked85 3y agoI wonder how long this offering will last before being shutdown?
- schnable 3y agoThought Pollen was going to be another bad Google product name, but it's actually just a very literal name.
- gdsdfe 3y agoSomeone should make an app to bet on how long until a Google service or product will go to the graveyard