Static Map API Licensing and usage limits

[fryday13]

Question for Google staff -

I spoke with Sales yesterday about getting a business license and they mentioned something that's been bothering me and would preclude from getting a license.

Our main usage will be the Static Maps API, not javascript. Every request for an image will be for a standard base map and at most 5 pushpins.  Pushpins will be passed in as lat/lon and do not need to be geocoded by Google on the fly.

Sales staff said that every pushpin counts as a geocode/geocoding. ?!?!  And that would go against our limit of 100,000 geocodes/day [on a paid license].  This doesn't make sense.  We're not really geocoding anything, we're passing in a lat/lon.  Did Sales misspeak?  Or if you _do_ count every pin against the geocoding limit, then maybe best not to call "geocoding" but "putting pins on a map" since it's not really a geocode operation.

Can someone please help clarify? 

Thanks so much.

[Luke (Google Employee)]

Hi,

The information you got from the Sales staff was incorrect.  Markers on static maps definitely don't count against your geocoding quota and that we're chasing up internally to make sure the sales team have the correct information.

- Luke

[fryday13]

I'll send you a PM.  Maybe we can post the final answer here once we figure it out.

[fryday13]

Just to close the loop and provide info for others.  Luke provided the following by email:

...

To answer your question, if you load a static map with pins that are set with a LatLng and not a location then it will not count as any geocode requests. If you look at this link: http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/staticmap?center=Brooklyn+Bridge,New+York,NY&zoom=14&size=512x512&maptype=roadmap&markers=color:blue%7Clabel:S%7C40.702147,-74.015794&markers=color:green%7Clabel:G%7C40.711614,-74.012318&markers=color:red%7Ccolor:red%7Clabel:C%7C40.718217,-73.998284&sensor=false

It will only do 1 geocode request because the center is not set to a LatLng so it will need to geocode Brooklyn Bridge New York, NY to  a location. If the center was set to something like 60.234,12.342 then no geocode requests would count.
...

Thank you, Luke.