Can Google offer an ad-supported alternative to the current usage levels for the Maps API ?

[Rob McMahon]

Could an alternative to the current usage limits system be devised by Google ? I can understand the need to charge large commercial users but the licence costs for semi-commercial ad supported sites (like mine) mean that Google Maps become unviable once usage levels hit this limit. With the current system developers are deserting Google Maps for other platforms.

Recently I observed the limits being exceeded on one of my projects. Effectively the map is killed off with an 'Oops something went wrong' message at certain times of the day.

Compare this approach to Google services such as YouTube where its possible to get millions of hits for videos that consume way more bandwidth than the average maps does.

YouTube has ad support options and Google Maps used to have the Ad Unit option until this feature was removed from the API.

If Google want to encourage developers to use the API then they really should offer an option to display maps beyond the current usage limits, provided that ad units similar to YouTube ads get displayed.

I would certainly prefer a popup ad on my maps instead of the current 'Oops something went wrong' message. One important feature should be the ability to hide ads after a certain time has elapsed (as YouTube does) - the old ad units did not have this feature which made them annoying for a lot of users.

Offering an ad unit option with the ability to earn a bit of revenue from the ads would do a lot to help the developer community. Large commercial users would continue to pay for their premium licences so as not to have ads displayed on the maps, therefore it would be a win win situation, boosting usage for the Maps API and boosting ad revenues for Google and for map developers.

[ralfwessels]

Hi Rob,

if billing is enabled (through API Console) you have to pay $0.50 USD / 1,000 additional map loads when you reach the limit, see https://developers.google.com/maps/pricing-and-plans/

Also interesting ist the new Google Maps APIs Premium Plan (former Maps for Work I guess), where you 'collect'  Maps APIs Credits  see https://developers.google.com/maps/premium/calculate-credits

but I couldn't found any pricedetails for this new model.

And at least there is the option using leaflet with OpenStreetMap data.

[Rob McMahon]

Thanks for the info Ralf, I wasn't aware of the credits plan so I'll check that out. The 50 cents per thousand views option is too much for my site since for a number of years it's been providing free mapping tools to users to add maps to their sites without having to code anything.

It's reasonable to charge commercial users like Google do and they do have a programme for non-profits. The main problem for me and other developers happens when your site falls between these two categories of commercial and non-profit. I guess this is why we see so many developers using Open Street Map rather than Google.

 

Here's an example project I've done which illustrates the issue http://www.mapchannels.com/VideoMaps.aspx which uses both YouTube and the Maps API. I could display the YouTube component as much as I wanted but if the daily views for the Maps got to 25k then I'd get billed for usage. Having an ad-supported option like YouTube would be great if Google could implement this

[ralfwessels]

Hi Rob,

if you check out the new Maps APIs Credit option it would be very interesting to get some informations, specialy about pricing.

[Rob McMahon]

I found this page with details of the API credits system at https://developers.google.com/maps/premium/calculate-credits.

It's aimed at people with an annual contract so they can compute usage across a range of APIs.

[ralfwessels]

Hi Rob,

quite interesting examples, but do you know what cost in dollar I have, when for example  2,463,750 credits needed per year (as in the real estate example calculated)?

[Rob McMahon]

There are some prices at https://developers.google.com/maps/pricing-and-plans/#details . The premium plan prices are not listed, you have to contact sales to obtain these. When I enquired a few years ago it was $10k per year but that may have changed.