from Hacker News

New Map APIs from Google

by nicolodev on 8/30/23, 9:35 AM with 117 comments

• by dahwolf on 8/30/23, 10:27 PM

  Don't ever build anything large on top of Google Maps.

  Beyond the free tier and 200$ credit, prices are so insane that they would make Musk and that Reddit CEO blush. Have a look yourself:

  https://mapsplatform.google.com/pricing/#pricing-grid

  Hosting the simplest of maps (static map) cost 2$ per 1,000 requests. Imagine you integrate such a map into content. Even for smaller projects it's not uncommon to get traffic into the hundreds of thousands or even millions on a monthly basis. I'm talking page views, not unique visitors. That would set you back hundreds per month or even 1,000$. Just to show a bloody map. Actually, not a map. It's a static picture of a map.

  Add some basic map interactivity, even just things like pins using the JavaScript API, and it becomes 7 times more expensive than that. I'm not kidding.

  Say you make a map with pins showing current wildfires. Now consider this costing 14$ per every 1,000 requests. Do the math of your page gaining some basic popularity. 100,000 page hits? Not a big deal. That'll be 1,400$ please.

  In most projects you want your map to be more useful. Add (reverse) geocoding, place details, etc. That's 3 APIs. Assuming equal usage, that's over 5,000$.

  In one month. For a smallish audience. To enable fairly basic functionality. You can rent a goddamn Mercedes AMG for that kind of money.

• by redeux on 8/30/23, 11:32 AM

  I’m relatively excited about the pollen API. I suffer from severe seasonal allergies. I know exactly what I’m allergic to because I’ve seen an allergist and I’ve undergone immunotherapy, and while that helped it didn’t cure it.

  I’ve struggled to find a good source of location specific pollen forecasting and historical data. The historical data is probably the most important for me because it would allow me to start taking medication weeks before the first pollen event, allowing for maximum therapeutic effect.

  I’m probably going to try to build something for myself later today and see if I can get the kind of data I’d like to see out of it.

• by l5870uoo9y on 8/30/23, 12:03 PM

  As an independent hacker using Google Maps or Mapbox have been out of reach for years given their high cost. Sure you get a free tier but as soon as you spend just a little above that it can quickly cost a small fortune. It is a bit sad for the developer community because there could without a doubt be a lot smaller and innovative projects that utilize maps if the pricing made that possible.

• by wiredfool on 8/30/23, 11:48 AM

  Solar potential is available at the global solar atlas (https://globalsolaratlas.info/map), including downloadable datasets.

• by cbg0 on 8/30/23, 10:56 AM

  The European Commission also has a nifty tool for estimating PV performance: https://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvg_tools/en/tools.html

• by udioron on 8/30/23, 1:29 PM

  https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-google-launches-applicati...

  > Google launches applications based on BreezoMeter acquisition

  > BreezoMeter, acquired by Google last year for $225 million, develops technology for predicting environmental hazards related to air quality and its impact on health.

• by londons_explore on 8/30/23, 11:08 AM

  I really wish Google would offer better lower level API's, and stop trying to do high level API's like "solar potential" and "pollen prediction".

  I basically just want a data dump of their whole map, like OSM provides, but I understand why they don't want to do that...

  So instead give me access to the whole maps database to run bigquery queries over it, and make me pay per record I touch or record in the result set.

  I'd love to be able to answer questions like "How far, on average, are my customers home addresses from the nearest footpath?", or "What percentage of residential addresses in the UK have an ATM within 1 mile", or "Give me a route from A to B, but not via any unpaved streets", or "Give me a list of the 100 biggest cities that have no ice rinks".

• by Rygian on 8/30/23, 11:48 AM

  And yet no news on API to collect location data shared privately by friends and family (https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/62938530)

• by cornfutes on 8/30/23, 3:18 PM

  Can we just get an API to request saved lists such as “favorites” and “want to go”?

  My motivation is that there seems to be some consistency issues with the backend. I save a spot, and then it gets reverted. Given that I have over 6,000 spots saved, it’s impossible to keep track of when Google didn’t commit or, worst, reverted a past pin.

  I’m pretty OCD about n%-completion of my travels.

• by efields on 8/30/23, 6:22 PM

  Is Solar API basically Project Sunroof but open to developers to put in any geo boundaries? This feels huge for scouting and conceptualizing solar projects.

  We have a small backyard operation that I want to scale to support a lifestyle, then have passive income as well.

• by glonq on 8/30/23, 3:19 PM

  For 10+ years I've had great success using leaflet for my mapping needs, consuming maps from mapbox or OSM or our own tile server.

  I'd be hard-pressed to consider Google unless I needed some of the specialized GIS data that they carry.

• by intrasight on 8/30/23, 2:49 PM

  Anybody know if there's a way to add the pollution layer to regular Google Maps? After reading about the new NASA TEMPO satellite. Or how to get map from NASA? I see no links in their announcement.

  Just dug in a bit more and found this: https://tempo.si.edu/data.html Which links to https://ofmpub.epa.gov/rsig/rsigserver?index.html which is offline.

• by diwakar2008 on 8/30/23, 11:34 AM

  What is the source of the data though? If I want the latest AQI for Mumbai, Delhi, and Bengaluru, how do I know where Google is getting the data from? Interesting product spin though ...

• by Racing0461 on 8/30/23, 6:42 PM

  If google really cared about the environment, they wouldn't have mandated return to office. Anything they say from then on regarding the environment is null and void.

• by dartharva on 8/30/23, 10:50 AM

  That's nice, would've been better if it endowed is basic features like the ability to extract and list places overlapping custom area polygons as well.

• by dang on 8/30/23, 6:59 PM

  Recent and related:

  Announcing the Pollen API - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37304803 - Aug 2023 (79 comments)

• by irvinej00 on 8/30/23, 2:25 PM

  Just waiting for the price hike once they have a monopoly in that niche

• by danjc on 8/30/23, 11:34 AM

  Wow first pollen, now solar. Talk about building resilient communities.

• by Omnipresent on 8/30/23, 11:43 AM

  This is great but doesn't work for applications that don't have the luxury of the internet. What are some decent map alternatives for air-gapped (no internet access) applications.

• by dang on 8/30/23, 7:01 PM

  Url changed from https://latlong.blog/2023/08/new-map-apis-from-google.html, which points to this.

  Submitters: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

• by martinkostov on 8/30/23, 12:17 PM

  When will such information be available in the Maps app?

• by efields on 8/30/23, 6:24 PM

  Climate change brogrammer starter pack.

• by kmlx on 8/30/23, 11:34 AM

  will these be available in the Google Maps app?

• by moneywoes on 8/30/23, 2:21 PM

  Are these free?

• by joshstrange on 8/30/23, 1:21 PM

  Unless it's internal/admin-only I can't see myself building on top of Google Maps APIs again. It's just too dang expensive. Maybe if some of the products I wrote were making money per-user (directly to me at least, I'm mainly B2B and so I could pass on the cost but the businesses don't care enough to pay it) I could justify it but just showing an interactive map of restaurant locations for a local food week ran up a couple hundred dollars. I spent a few hours and switched over to use ProtonMaps [0] and I've been very happy. I still use the Google API on the admin side to aid in looking up addresses but that usage is tiny compared to all the people viewing the data.

  That's all for a personal project but I've seen Google Maps costs spiral out of control at 2 different companies I've worked at. I pushed for OSM/etc at one company but was essentially told "Nobody ever got fired for buying Google Maps" (we were just drawing polygons on a map) and I think I might be successful at pushing for ProtonMaps (OSM under the covers) at my current.

  Google Maps lets you get your foot in the door "for free" but once you pass the free tier it's insane.

  [0] https://protomaps.com/

• by AlbertCory on 8/30/23, 3:29 PM

  I was the Ads rep to the Maps Monetization team at Google in 2010, and then I actually worked in Maps. Back then, Maps was a huge money loser. Placing ads outside the map data was a dismal failure financially, and they weren't yet selling "ads" inside the map (where you pay to have your business shown).

  API access was charged for, but as people have pointed out, it was a bargain compared to now.

  In any large company, sooner or later the CFO and minions will notice that you're losing money and demand you fix it. Thus, YouTube has all these ads that interrupt your viewing, besides coming up before you start. And Maps is raising API prices.

  If you read these articles, you see that ArcGIS has a fairly massive footprint in the geo space. Google is not the only game in town for geo information. I haven't done much with Apple Maps, but that seems to be improving, too.

  You can find details of what I did, including how to use a feature I did that's still there, at:

  https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/working-at-google-maps and

  https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/working-at-google-maps-c...

• by miroljub on 8/30/23, 11:23 AM

  Not interested.

  The main risk is, it's Google, and it will be discontinued or over-monetized eventually.

  Better look for more reliable alternatives.