12 ms·

Google maps cut prices by 88%

205 points by njx 14y ago

corywatilo 14y ago
It's about time. It's nice to see Google is feeling the pressure from other (relatively up-and-coming) mapping services like OpenStreetMaps and MapBox to the point where they actually made their prices more competitive. Also I've worked with several large websites who have moved from GMaps to Bing Maps over the past few years. GMaps is great, but ultimately not worth the price at $4/1000, especially for a small site operator like myself.
cs702 14y ago
Wow. The parties that will ultimately suffer most from this are Navteq and TomTom, which now charge between one and two orders of magnitude more than Google for map data. For car makers seeking to add built-in navigation to their vehicles, Google Maps is now a much more compelling choice than either of those two companies' offerings. (FWIW, TomTom is reportedly Apple's supplier of map data.)
- rmc 14y ago
  They aren't doing this because they want to hurt TomTom & Navteq. They are doing this because they are suffering from OpenStreetMap, who charges many orders of magnitude less than Google Maps even with this price drop.
  - mtgx 14y ago
    Many orders of magnitude? What are they charging? 1 cent per 1 million maps?
    - Bootvis 14y ago
      OpenStreetMaps is free but you've to host it yourself.
      - _delirium 14y ago
        There are several free OSM tile servers too, so you don't even need to host yourself. MapQuest's is probably the most generous: you can use it completely free, even in paid apps and webapps. They just request that you let them know in advance if you plan to distribute an app where you anticipate very high usage (currently defined as >4,000 tiles/second). http://developer.mapquest.com/web/products/open/map http://developer.mapquest.com/web/products/open/map
        Bootvis 14y ago
        Wow, didn't know that, thanks!
        ak217 14y ago
        Just looked it up and realized that MapQuest went on board with OpenStreetMap back in 2010. I never knew that, props to MapQuest!
  - jan_g 14y ago
    The problem with open street maps is that it so much worse than google maps. Orders of magnitude worse. I love the concept and in theory that concept is unbeatable (who else but those living in the area have the most intricate knowledge of roads, paths, etc?). But as of now, it is simply not comparable. Many features missing, and the data is very incomplete (many streets missing, missing buildings and street numbers, parks, POIs, ...).
    - easp 14y ago
      But there are also plenty of applications where Google's higher quality doesn't offer a significant advantage. At my last job I started to negotiate with Google about their (old) new maps pricing. They kept pointing to features that made no difference for our application. We needed Ok maps and decent forward and reverse geocoding. We were in their free tier, but needeed to find a solution for when we outgrew it, because their pricing was way way too high for our business model. I left that company, bust if nothing else, this new pricing will further delay the day that they consider replacing Google maps. For new projects though, I'd probably skip google maps altogether, or at least use them in such a way that the client-side code would be totally provider independent.
    - rmc 14y ago
      In some areas. In some areas OSM is way better than Google Maps. Google Maps is relatively consistent level of quality across a country (some countries are much better mapped than others in GM), whereas in OSM one part of a city might be well mapped, and another part poorly mapped. OSM better than GM: Sarajevo: http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/?mt0=mapnik&mt1=googlemap&lon=18.42093&lat=43.8591&zoom=14 http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/?mt0=mapnik&mt1=googlemap&#... POIs within Dublin: http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/?mt0=mapnik&mt1=googlemap&lon=-6.26433&lat=53.34504&zoom=18 http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/?mt0=mapnik&mt1=googlemap&#...
      - jan_g 14y ago
        Yes, I know there are areas/countries which are poorly mapped in Google Maps (as your example of Srajevo clearly shows). But generally I've found OSM much worse than Google Maps. Regarding Dublin - your link has missing POI info, don't know why. Here's a screenshot directly from google maps page: http://cl.ly/1H2r0X2I1U2O3F0j0X2U http://cl.ly/1H2r0X2I1U2O3F0j0X2U
- technoslut 14y ago
  >The parties that will ultimately suffer most from this are Navteq and TomTom Their time is coming up because these companies cannot update at the same pace as the rest of the world. It just costs too much. In many ways, this is similar to why Webkit will dominate as well.
  - azakai 14y ago
    > Their time is coming up because these companies cannot update at the same pace as the rest of the world. It just costs too much. In many ways, this is similar to why Webkit will dominate as well. Yes, it's exactly like how Windows dominates mobile. Other companies cannot update at the same pace and it just costs too much. These trends are so easy to follow I wonder why anyone bothers to form their own company or build their own technology. Oh wait, that's not true is it.
    - technoslut 14y ago
      OS development is not the same thing nor are many other categories. There are too many other things at play. This isn't a hard and fast rule that's applicable to everything. Mapping is different in the sense that it's primary usefulness comes from being accurate and constantly updated. The best way to do this is from crowd-sourced data. As good as Google Maps is, it still has a hard time keeping current. I mention Webkit in the same post because one of the most fundamental features of any browser is for a site to be rendered correctly. We've seen the worst of this before with IE and ActiveX
- rmc 14y ago
  TomTom is reportedly Apple's supplier of map data Apple get some of their data from OpenStreetMap.
  - tonfa 14y ago
    I guess for places where Navtek does not have coverage (similarly to how Google did expand coverage with mapmaker in Africa).
    - rmc 14y ago
      Apple were using OSM in european capital cities aswell…
- Someone 14y ago
  Not reportedly: http://corporate.tomtom.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=682065 http://corporate.tomtom.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=6820... (Apple-style concise, I guess) And, reportedly :-), _one_of_the supplierS.
jpb0104 14y ago
This doesn't seem to affect their Enterprise prices does it?
rmc 14y ago
Good to see OpenStreetMap starting to really shake up geodata.
mgkimsal 14y ago
about. damn. time. Yes... they'd only recently hiked their prices (last year?) but they shouldn't have in the first place. I'd priced out using google maps for a service, and it was cost prohibitive. However, so was bing maps, and getting a firm price from bing was even harder because my use case didn't fit in 'standard use cases'. In our case, apparently using a mobile app to add metadata to a location constituted 'asset tracking', which puts you in to a whole other level of pricing stratosphere. I just get the feeling that many mapping apps out there that use google/bing/whatever are totally skirting the actual real pricing and use case terms, much like loads of people copy Photoshop. As long as Adobe turns a blind eye to some level of piracy, it keeps Photoshop top of mind and gives people fewer reasons to seek alternatives.
- ghshephard 14y ago
  I'm curious why the hostility. Isn't Google's positioning little more than a simple factor in your decision making process as to which mapping provider you wish to use? Indeed, I'm wondering why the HN crowd isn't _upset_ at the reduced pricing, because now it reduces the incentive to use (and contribute to, improve) OSM.
  - ThePherocity 14y ago
    Well, google started charging WAY too much, so you have folks with started projects that simply became untenable. And the principal of something for free/cheap becoming very expensive after you've built an infrastructure around something is shady at best.
    - ghshephard 14y ago
      So - my company uses Google maps as the foundation of one of the features of a couple of our products, and, originally, we had free licenses. But the day we started using them, we had a conversation where we wondered what Google was eventually going to charge us, and when they were going to charge us. As it turns out - our original guesses back in 2004, where just a shade lower than what we ended up paying in 2011. Our volume is lower than others, and we get a lot of value out of each map display - so the pricing (around $10,000/year) is just a cost of business. We certainly don't consider it too much for our needs. On the flip side - if we weren't extracting much in the way of revenue per copy of software, and/or our volume was really high - obviously OSM would be very attractive, and we would be waving bye to Google Maps, and joining that community (and hopefully helping to improve the material by donating to up-and-coming cartographers if we weren't inclined to utilize our GIS skills). To some degree, I think Google re-enforced a very, very valuable lesson - if something is being offered very free/cheap, and is one of the foundations of your product, and you don't have a license/contract (e.g. GPL/BSD) guaranteeing you that pricing - be aware that you are at the mercy of that third party and plan accordingly. We see this on HN over, and over, and over again with companies like Apple that end up screwing businesses that rely on the Apple store/iOS - I wonder if PG has written an essay on that - building your house on other people's foundation.
zackham 14y ago
Wow this is fantastic news. We are in the process of shifting some of our usage to OSM (and will likely continue) but this makes GMaps a reasonable expense now.
georgemcbay 14y ago
$0.50 per 1000 maps is way better pricing than $4 per 1000 maps, yet still a lot more expensive than using OpenStreetMap even if you factor in CPU and bandwidth costs to run your own data/tile servers. Assuming OSM is "good enough" for your usage when compared to Google Maps, I don't think this pricing change really modifies the decision much for a lot of people. This may slow down the tide of those switching over but I don't think it will reverse or stop it.
- raverbashing 14y ago
  And of course, I guess most of the ones that went to OSM after google started charging aren't gonna say "oh well now it's cheap let's go back"" Google seem to have a special talent in alienating their customers
- crikli 14y ago
  Wonder if you still have to pay $10K a year just to get SSL. This is one of the biggest reasons, ok, the only reason we've used Bing or OSM for many of our clients.
  - kingnothing 14y ago
    I was curious about that, too, because it's the same reason we use Bing instead of Google Maps. Their FAQ made it sound like it's free, but I didn't do any serious investigating yet.
  - chrisbroadfoot 14y ago
    SSL is available in the free API. Just load the API from here: https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?sensor=false (set sensor to true if you're using any kind of geolocation)
    - crikli 14y ago
      Thanks! This must have been a development within the last year or so.
joeblau 14y ago
Thank goodness! I made a speed trap tracking (vroomtrap.com -- graveyard) program a while ago that never got off the ground, but when I heard about their price increase, I was dumbfounded. All in all; I have been pretty amazed by Google's new "monetize everything" initiative. Glad to see that competition from OSM and others is keeping them in check.
JiPi 14y ago
I wonder if will affect Geocoding limits too? https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geocoding/#Limits https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geocoding/#...
- JiPi 14y ago
  "if it will"
  - ThePherocity 14y ago
    You can edit a post ^
Wajeez 14y ago
A bit too late?
sheff 14y ago
This price reduction looks like it is only for sites supported by advertising / unmonetised sites. Any startup planning on charging for an app or service which incorporates any kind of map will still have to pay a minimum $10,000 a year license fee to use Google Maps, which is ridiculously high as a starting point. What Googles mishandling of the charging changes has done is to heavily publicise the fact that the alternatives (mainly OSM) are now good enough for major companies to switch to without much hassle.
- chrisbroadfoot 14y ago
  It's possible to use the free API on a commercial site.
  - sheff 14y ago
    I was just going by the "Do I need to use Google Maps API for Business?" in the FAQ here :http://www.google.com/enterprise/earthmaps/maps-faq.html http://www.google.com/enterprise/earthmaps/maps-faq.html . "If you are charging a fee for access to your Maps solution, whether for a business or consumer audience, you are required to purchase the Maps API Premier." To me this reads as, any SAAS web app which used a Google map anywhere would be required to pay $10,000 per year plus usage charges.
    - zackham 14y ago
      https://developers.google.com/maps/terms https://developers.google.com/maps/terms 10.1.2(a): "You must not charge users or any other third party any fee for the use of the Maps API Implementation, the Service, or the Content ... " You can use it on a commercial site, but the maps implementation must be available to free users. It limits your options but there are plenty of sites that are commercial ventures and work within these limitations.
    - easp 14y ago
      I don't think that this is actually anything new. I recall similar language when I looked at their maps licensing terms ~four years ago. When I dug deeper, it appeared, at the time, that this only applied to features of the app that required payment. So, we were free to offer maps features on our site as part of our free offering. We could still have premium features without paying for a premier license, so long as those premium features didn't rely on Google maps.
danielrm26 14y ago
Someone's afraid of iOS 6 Beta 2.
latchkey 14y ago
We switched from Google Maps to OSM because they were too expensive. Now that we are using the Leaflet JS lib, we are really happy with it. Not only is it a fairly nice API, but it is open source, so it is much easier to debug than working with Google's obfuscated code. Even with this price reduction, I see no reason to even consider switching back. The only downside to OSM is that we needed the tiles served up through https since our site is always https, but there are workarounds for that. ;-)
bojanbabic 14y ago
I hope they will do same with appengine prices. I'd be willing to return if they had more reasonable pricing.
jeffnappi 14y ago
It's pretty shady how Google muscled out the competition by offering Google Maps for free after the acquisition of Keyhole. They basically murdered MapQuest and other "overpriced" solutions only to raise their price to even higher levels once they had a near monopoly on the embedded maps market. Clever, but dirty. Certainly this could be considered "evil".
andye 14y ago
I don't like google more and more...when they didn't feel any competition out there, they gave you a very high price. And when there are some other choices, they reduce the price sharply. Why not just give the developers the low price first? Take the GAE as the example, if you enable billing, you have to pay at least $9 a month, no matter how much more you are using over the quota. Now, Google is not friendly to developers at all.
- tbatterii 14y ago
  GAE is for "big boy" apps not projects for hobbyists. The pricing reflects that.
chris123 14y ago
"Closing the barn door after the horse is gone" is the first thing that popped into my mind when I read this headline. The second thing was that they were being "penny wise and pound foolish" when they raised prices in the first place (last October, I guess it was). So they got like six months of revenue bump, pissed a lot of people off and created an opportunity for at least one big and viable competitor. Smart. And now they flip flop. The message is that if they think they can bend you over a barrel and have their way, they will. And then, if the competitive landscape changes, giving you a chance to get their dick out of your *ss, they will try to kiss and makeup (until they sense their next opportunity to bend you over). What did idiot Bush say? "Fool me once, shame on you... Fool me twice..." http://youtu.be/eKgPY1adc0A http://youtu.be/eKgPY1adc0A
- ww520 14y ago
  Google has lost lots of credibility among 3rd party developers using their API and services with the dramatic price hike with Google Maps and AppEngine. You would never know when they will decide to jack up the price again.
  - angkec 14y ago
    Exactly what I was thinking. First reaction from me was that they will raise the price again when they gain market share, second reaction was a quiet note to myself that if they ever drop price on AppEngine like they did to GMap I shall not go back since my startup was hurt so bad with their vendor lock-in and dramatic price raise.
josephlord 14y ago
iOS 6 may be a big part of this. They might have preferred to reduce prices to other customers before but if they offered it to everyone they would have had to offer it to Apple who may have been the majority of their maps revenue and it was also a mechanism to add cost to Android's key competition. Now Apple are leaving anyway the difference that the price cut makes will be smaller (in absolute terms) and it will not harm Android either.
jeffnappi 14y ago
There's a good discussion on this over at the Reddit thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/vhj7g/google_slashes_price_88_for_using_google_maps_api/ http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/vhj7g/google_sl... I found this comment very interesting: "I'm a developer for a major online brand and finding our locations is an utterly crucial part of our business. When Google started charging us for mapping they played hard when coming to a deal to pay for their services. They spelled out a price and there was no negotiating. The arrogance from anyone we had contact with at Google was mind-blowing. We quietly re-developed our location search to use to Bing and pulled the trigger one day. Needless to say Microsoft was more than happy to have our business and was very helpful. As far as mapping, Bing is surprisingly accurate and competitive. We've never looked back. Google wanted over 2 million per year just to show our locations."
PatrickL 14y ago
We developed some webbased application using Google Maps and before going in beta, had to change to OSM because of change of Google's pricing structure (we simply cannot afford the 10.000+$ API Premier license fee). But we are hopelessly stuck with OSM are not able to determine the exact location based on address details. Is anyone interested to help out for a few hundred $ ....?

205 points by njx 14y ago

It's about time. It's nice to see Google is feeling the pressure from other (relatively up-and-coming) mapping services like OpenStreetMaps and MapBox to the point where they actually made their prices more competitive. Also I've worked with several large websites who have moved from GMaps to Bing Maps over the past few years. GMaps is great, but ultimately not worth the price at $4/1000, especially for a small site operator like myself.

cs702 14y ago

Wow. The parties that will ultimately suffer most from this are Navteq and TomTom, which now charge between one and two orders of magnitude more than Google for map data. For car makers seeking to add built-in navigation to their vehicles, Google Maps is now a much more compelling choice than either of those two companies' offerings. (FWIW, TomTom is reportedly Apple's supplier of map data.)

rmc 14y ago
They aren't doing this because they want to hurt TomTom & Navteq. They are doing this because they are suffering from OpenStreetMap, who charges many orders of magnitude less than Google Maps even with this price drop.
- mtgx 14y ago
  Many orders of magnitude? What are they charging? 1 cent per 1 million maps?
  - Bootvis 14y ago
    OpenStreetMaps is free but you've to host it yourself.
    - _delirium 14y ago
      There are several free OSM tile servers too, so you don't even need to host yourself. MapQuest's is probably the most generous: you can use it completely free, even in paid apps and webapps. They just request that you let them know in advance if you plan to distribute an app where you anticipate very high usage (currently defined as >4,000 tiles/second). http://developer.mapquest.com/web/products/open/map http://developer.mapquest.com/web/products/open/map
      - Bootvis 14y ago
        Wow, didn't know that, thanks!
      - ak217 14y ago
        Just looked it up and realized that MapQuest went on board with OpenStreetMap back in 2010. I never knew that, props to MapQuest!
- jan_g 14y ago
  The problem with open street maps is that it so much worse than google maps. Orders of magnitude worse. I love the concept and in theory that concept is unbeatable (who else but those living in the area have the most intricate knowledge of roads, paths, etc?). But as of now, it is simply not comparable. Many features missing, and the data is very incomplete (many streets missing, missing buildings and street numbers, parks, POIs, ...).
  - easp 14y ago
    But there are also plenty of applications where Google's higher quality doesn't offer a significant advantage. At my last job I started to negotiate with Google about their (old) new maps pricing. They kept pointing to features that made no difference for our application. We needed Ok maps and decent forward and reverse geocoding. We were in their free tier, but needeed to find a solution for when we outgrew it, because their pricing was way way too high for our business model. I left that company, bust if nothing else, this new pricing will further delay the day that they consider replacing Google maps. For new projects though, I'd probably skip google maps altogether, or at least use them in such a way that the client-side code would be totally provider independent.
  - rmc 14y ago
    In some areas. In some areas OSM is way better than Google Maps. Google Maps is relatively consistent level of quality across a country (some countries are much better mapped than others in GM), whereas in OSM one part of a city might be well mapped, and another part poorly mapped. OSM better than GM: Sarajevo: http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/?mt0=mapnik&mt1=googlemap&lon=18.42093&lat=43.8591&zoom=14 http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/?mt0=mapnik&mt1=googlemap&#... POIs within Dublin: http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/?mt0=mapnik&mt1=googlemap&lon=-6.26433&lat=53.34504&zoom=18 http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/?mt0=mapnik&mt1=googlemap&#...
    - jan_g 14y ago
      Yes, I know there are areas/countries which are poorly mapped in Google Maps (as your example of Srajevo clearly shows). But generally I've found OSM much worse than Google Maps. Regarding Dublin - your link has missing POI info, don't know why. Here's a screenshot directly from google maps page: http://cl.ly/1H2r0X2I1U2O3F0j0X2U http://cl.ly/1H2r0X2I1U2O3F0j0X2U
technoslut 14y ago
>The parties that will ultimately suffer most from this are Navteq and TomTom Their time is coming up because these companies cannot update at the same pace as the rest of the world. It just costs too much. In many ways, this is similar to why Webkit will dominate as well.
- azakai 14y ago
  > Their time is coming up because these companies cannot update at the same pace as the rest of the world. It just costs too much. In many ways, this is similar to why Webkit will dominate as well. Yes, it's exactly like how Windows dominates mobile. Other companies cannot update at the same pace and it just costs too much. These trends are so easy to follow I wonder why anyone bothers to form their own company or build their own technology. Oh wait, that's not true is it.
  - technoslut 14y ago
    OS development is not the same thing nor are many other categories. There are too many other things at play. This isn't a hard and fast rule that's applicable to everything. Mapping is different in the sense that it's primary usefulness comes from being accurate and constantly updated. The best way to do this is from crowd-sourced data. As good as Google Maps is, it still has a hard time keeping current. I mention Webkit in the same post because one of the most fundamental features of any browser is for a site to be rendered correctly. We've seen the worst of this before with IE and ActiveX
rmc 14y ago
TomTom is reportedly Apple's supplier of map data Apple get some of their data from OpenStreetMap.
- tonfa 14y ago
  I guess for places where Navtek does not have coverage (similarly to how Google did expand coverage with mapmaker in Africa).
  - rmc 14y ago
    Apple were using OSM in european capital cities aswell…
Someone 14y ago
Not reportedly: http://corporate.tomtom.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=682065 http://corporate.tomtom.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=6820... (Apple-style concise, I guess) And, reportedly :-), _one_of_the supplierS.

jpb0104 14y ago

This doesn't seem to affect their Enterprise prices does it?

rmc 14y ago

Good to see OpenStreetMap starting to really shake up geodata.

mgkimsal 14y ago

about. damn. time. Yes... they'd only recently hiked their prices (last year?) but they shouldn't have in the first place. I'd priced out using google maps for a service, and it was cost prohibitive. However, so was bing maps, and getting a firm price from bing was even harder because my use case didn't fit in 'standard use cases'. In our case, apparently using a mobile app to add metadata to a location constituted 'asset tracking', which puts you in to a whole other level of pricing stratosphere. I just get the feeling that many mapping apps out there that use google/bing/whatever are totally skirting the actual real pricing and use case terms, much like loads of people copy Photoshop. As long as Adobe turns a blind eye to some level of piracy, it keeps Photoshop top of mind and gives people fewer reasons to seek alternatives.

ghshephard 14y ago
I'm curious why the hostility. Isn't Google's positioning little more than a simple factor in your decision making process as to which mapping provider you wish to use? Indeed, I'm wondering why the HN crowd isn't _upset_ at the reduced pricing, because now it reduces the incentive to use (and contribute to, improve) OSM.
- ThePherocity 14y ago
  Well, google started charging WAY too much, so you have folks with started projects that simply became untenable. And the principal of something for free/cheap becoming very expensive after you've built an infrastructure around something is shady at best.
  - ghshephard 14y ago
    So - my company uses Google maps as the foundation of one of the features of a couple of our products, and, originally, we had free licenses. But the day we started using them, we had a conversation where we wondered what Google was eventually going to charge us, and when they were going to charge us. As it turns out - our original guesses back in 2004, where just a shade lower than what we ended up paying in 2011. Our volume is lower than others, and we get a lot of value out of each map display - so the pricing (around $10,000/year) is just a cost of business. We certainly don't consider it too much for our needs. On the flip side - if we weren't extracting much in the way of revenue per copy of software, and/or our volume was really high - obviously OSM would be very attractive, and we would be waving bye to Google Maps, and joining that community (and hopefully helping to improve the material by donating to up-and-coming cartographers if we weren't inclined to utilize our GIS skills). To some degree, I think Google re-enforced a very, very valuable lesson - if something is being offered very free/cheap, and is one of the foundations of your product, and you don't have a license/contract (e.g. GPL/BSD) guaranteeing you that pricing - be aware that you are at the mercy of that third party and plan accordingly. We see this on HN over, and over, and over again with companies like Apple that end up screwing businesses that rely on the Apple store/iOS - I wonder if PG has written an essay on that - building your house on other people's foundation.

zackham 14y ago

Wow this is fantastic news. We are in the process of shifting some of our usage to OSM (and will likely continue) but this makes GMaps a reasonable expense now.

georgemcbay 14y ago

$0.50 per 1000 maps is way better pricing than $4 per 1000 maps, yet still a lot more expensive than using OpenStreetMap even if you factor in CPU and bandwidth costs to run your own data/tile servers. Assuming OSM is "good enough" for your usage when compared to Google Maps, I don't think this pricing change really modifies the decision much for a lot of people. This may slow down the tide of those switching over but I don't think it will reverse or stop it.

raverbashing 14y ago
And of course, I guess most of the ones that went to OSM after google started charging aren't gonna say "oh well now it's cheap let's go back"" Google seem to have a special talent in alienating their customers
crikli 14y ago
Wonder if you still have to pay $10K a year just to get SSL. This is one of the biggest reasons, ok, the only reason we've used Bing or OSM for many of our clients.
- kingnothing 14y ago
  I was curious about that, too, because it's the same reason we use Bing instead of Google Maps. Their FAQ made it sound like it's free, but I didn't do any serious investigating yet.
- chrisbroadfoot 14y ago
  SSL is available in the free API. Just load the API from here: https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?sensor=false (set sensor to true if you're using any kind of geolocation)
  - crikli 14y ago
    Thanks! This must have been a development within the last year or so.

joeblau 14y ago

Thank goodness! I made a speed trap tracking (vroomtrap.com -- graveyard) program a while ago that never got off the ground, but when I heard about their price increase, I was dumbfounded. All in all; I have been pretty amazed by Google's new "monetize everything" initiative. Glad to see that competition from OSM and others is keeping them in check.

JiPi 14y ago

I wonder if will affect Geocoding limits too? https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geocoding/#Limits https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geocoding/#...

JiPi 14y ago
"if it will"
- ThePherocity 14y ago
  You can edit a post ^

Wajeez 14y ago

A bit too late?

sheff 14y ago

This price reduction looks like it is only for sites supported by advertising / unmonetised sites. Any startup planning on charging for an app or service which incorporates any kind of map will still have to pay a minimum $10,000 a year license fee to use Google Maps, which is ridiculously high as a starting point. What Googles mishandling of the charging changes has done is to heavily publicise the fact that the alternatives (mainly OSM) are now good enough for major companies to switch to without much hassle.

chrisbroadfoot 14y ago
It's possible to use the free API on a commercial site.
- sheff 14y ago
  I was just going by the "Do I need to use Google Maps API for Business?" in the FAQ here :http://www.google.com/enterprise/earthmaps/maps-faq.html http://www.google.com/enterprise/earthmaps/maps-faq.html . "If you are charging a fee for access to your Maps solution, whether for a business or consumer audience, you are required to purchase the Maps API Premier." To me this reads as, any SAAS web app which used a Google map anywhere would be required to pay $10,000 per year plus usage charges.
  - zackham 14y ago
    https://developers.google.com/maps/terms https://developers.google.com/maps/terms 10.1.2(a): "You must not charge users or any other third party any fee for the use of the Maps API Implementation, the Service, or the Content ... " You can use it on a commercial site, but the maps implementation must be available to free users. It limits your options but there are plenty of sites that are commercial ventures and work within these limitations.
  - easp 14y ago
    I don't think that this is actually anything new. I recall similar language when I looked at their maps licensing terms ~four years ago. When I dug deeper, it appeared, at the time, that this only applied to features of the app that required payment. So, we were free to offer maps features on our site as part of our free offering. We could still have premium features without paying for a premier license, so long as those premium features didn't rely on Google maps.

danielrm26 14y ago

Someone's afraid of iOS 6 Beta 2.

latchkey 14y ago

We switched from Google Maps to OSM because they were too expensive. Now that we are using the Leaflet JS lib, we are really happy with it. Not only is it a fairly nice API, but it is open source, so it is much easier to debug than working with Google's obfuscated code. Even with this price reduction, I see no reason to even consider switching back. The only downside to OSM is that we needed the tiles served up through https since our site is always https, but there are workarounds for that. ;-)

bojanbabic 14y ago

I hope they will do same with appengine prices. I'd be willing to return if they had more reasonable pricing.

jeffnappi 14y ago

It's pretty shady how Google muscled out the competition by offering Google Maps for free after the acquisition of Keyhole. They basically murdered MapQuest and other "overpriced" solutions only to raise their price to even higher levels once they had a near monopoly on the embedded maps market. Clever, but dirty. Certainly this could be considered "evil".

andye 14y ago

I don't like google more and more...when they didn't feel any competition out there, they gave you a very high price. And when there are some other choices, they reduce the price sharply. Why not just give the developers the low price first? Take the GAE as the example, if you enable billing, you have to pay at least $9 a month, no matter how much more you are using over the quota. Now, Google is not friendly to developers at all.

tbatterii 14y ago
GAE is for "big boy" apps not projects for hobbyists. The pricing reflects that.

chris123 14y ago

"Closing the barn door after the horse is gone" is the first thing that popped into my mind when I read this headline. The second thing was that they were being "penny wise and pound foolish" when they raised prices in the first place (last October, I guess it was). So they got like six months of revenue bump, pissed a lot of people off and created an opportunity for at least one big and viable competitor. Smart. And now they flip flop. The message is that if they think they can bend you over a barrel and have their way, they will. And then, if the competitive landscape changes, giving you a chance to get their dick out of your *ss, they will try to kiss and makeup (until they sense their next opportunity to bend you over). What did idiot Bush say? "Fool me once, shame on you... Fool me twice..." http://youtu.be/eKgPY1adc0A http://youtu.be/eKgPY1adc0A

ww520 14y ago
Google has lost lots of credibility among 3rd party developers using their API and services with the dramatic price hike with Google Maps and AppEngine. You would never know when they will decide to jack up the price again.
- angkec 14y ago
  Exactly what I was thinking. First reaction from me was that they will raise the price again when they gain market share, second reaction was a quiet note to myself that if they ever drop price on AppEngine like they did to GMap I shall not go back since my startup was hurt so bad with their vendor lock-in and dramatic price raise.

josephlord 14y ago

iOS 6 may be a big part of this. They might have preferred to reduce prices to other customers before but if they offered it to everyone they would have had to offer it to Apple who may have been the majority of their maps revenue and it was also a mechanism to add cost to Android's key competition. Now Apple are leaving anyway the difference that the price cut makes will be smaller (in absolute terms) and it will not harm Android either.

jeffnappi 14y ago

There's a good discussion on this over at the Reddit thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/vhj7g/google_slashes_price_88_for_using_google_maps_api/ http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/vhj7g/google_sl... I found this comment very interesting: "I'm a developer for a major online brand and finding our locations is an utterly crucial part of our business. When Google started charging us for mapping they played hard when coming to a deal to pay for their services. They spelled out a price and there was no negotiating. The arrogance from anyone we had contact with at Google was mind-blowing. We quietly re-developed our location search to use to Bing and pulled the trigger one day. Needless to say Microsoft was more than happy to have our business and was very helpful. As far as mapping, Bing is surprisingly accurate and competitive. We've never looked back. Google wanted over 2 million per year just to show our locations."

PatrickL 14y ago

We developed some webbased application using Google Maps and before going in beta, had to change to OSM because of change of Google's pricing structure (we simply cannot afford the 10.000+$ API Premier license fee). But we are hopelessly stuck with OSM are not able to determine the exact location based on address details. Is anyone interested to help out for a few hundred $ ....?