I don’t know how competitive the pricing is, but it is interesting how the comments go when Google does try and charge a high price for something over simply monetizing via advertising.
I wonder if the perception would be different if Google Maps were a standalone startup developing a world class mapping product. Where the common manta would be along the lines of double your pricing.
The thing is Google Maps is not a monopoly. There are plenty of other map providers, so a price increase is not anti competitive, because you can switch to other providers.
Doesn't this assume users have no choice? If a better map product came along, couldn't they also make it free (to compete with Google's future raised prices) and then when Google is bankrupt, raise the price? Isn't this totally ignoring the business model and claiming a monopoly on price alone? What's the barrier to entry? Is Google blocking competing map provider's search results?
One of the criticisms of when Google Maps API was basically a free for all was that it was suppressing the ability of startups to exist by devaluing products; it seems like with these pricing changes Google is giving the competition an opportunity to swoop in.
Yeah, if Google had differential pricing for something that costs them the same to produce, I'm sure you would soon find innovative middlemen who make it their business to source the Maps from lower cost priced countries to higher ones.
Just like travel agents or passengers find ways to take cheaper flights from countries or city pairs that airlines price differently to help capture more market, even though it doesn't cost them very different to provide the service.
Seems like there is a good chance that all of the Google Maps competitors will raise their prices now too (although probably not as substantially), so it doesn't seem like a fair price comparison until all of the dust settles there. They all probably set their price ranges to be inline with Google Maps since that is the most popular product and there are very few reasons why a potential customer would go with a non-Google Maps product if it was more expensive than Google Maps.
I know 1st world companies with millions of dollars in revenue who quickly switched away from Google Maps, at some expense, to alternate map providers after Google hiked up its prices for Premium customers a few years ago.
There where so many "why should we pay/develop X, Google does it for free" conversations at one of my previous employers who competes in the mapping space with Google.
I pointed that out in the caveats since that happened with Google Maps, but in practice I don't think it'll happen (or if it happens it will only be a slight increase) since that would seriously upset its users. Especially since the low price was likely due to competition anyways.
In the case of Google Maps it was effectively a monopoly.
I can't comment on MapBox's pricing as I haven't explored it yet. All I remember is that for the projects where I implemented Google maps, the pricing model wasn't sustainable for the upper bounds of projected user growth we had for it.
Google charges the most for maps because they have the best service.
And generally speaking, I don't think competing on price is a great strategy for turning the company around. The OSM map services will have a big price advantage because all of their data is free, even though it's not as good as Google's. And if Yahoo enhances the data, or gets their own data and tries to charge a premium, then they're back to where they are now trying to compete with Google...
I'm not saying they can't make a better service for cheaper, but their focus should be on making a great map service, not on cutting the price.
I can see a big migration away from Google Maps with Google's new pricing. Google's pricing can potentially get prohibitively expensive quickly. 25000 map views per day and $4/1000 map views that exceed the free 25000 map views. I am starting a new project that is focused around mapping. There is no way Google Maps will work for me with their pricing model. Open Street Maps is great.
Yes, that's my point. There's clearly competition in compute. That Mapbox raised prices after Google did points to maps not being terribly cut throat (I think Mapbox got lots of low value load when Google upped prices, load that they then subsequently decided to shed by upping prices). Other map data providers were already more expensive than Google.
Everyone here is assuming Google is increasing the price to win money.
Considering Google Maps is key in Google's business I wouldn't be surprised if this was actually intended to weed out small companies and only keep the big whales around.
I don't know the numbers but I imagine Google Maps app/web users are by far the largest traffic source. Traffic from projects using the API must be peanuts in comparison.
As someone who runs a service where a google map is THE interface, I don't think these rates are all that bad considering how powerful of a tool gmaps is. However, my service doesn't come close to the 25k required before billing comes in to the picture.
I do wonder what the people behind padmapper.com think, which most likely will get charged and has a similar gmap as the service interface.
The really interesting cases will be things like Yelp, where the map is a small feature to the overall service. At 1.5M page views/day that's $1,500 per day...
Most people will take free and good enough over a superior product any day. Google basically killed the market for mapping products and now have started charging everyone for theirs when used commercially.
Here is the problem. When Google first launched Maps it was free and they ran all of the other competition out of business. Now that all their competition are dead they want to charge for it. If that doesn't scream antitrust I don't know what else does. Google has grown maps using pretty shady tactics. Their data is only so good due to mining data from all the Android users and I bet Street View has a lot of government money behind it.
I think it is positive that google finally reaches a sane price point with maps. As the comparison in the blog post shows, the whole market of map providers looked at what gmaps is charging and kind of went along with a price in the same category.
The higher price allows them to actually get paid for the value they provide to various startups, which - as they pointed out in the blog post - would not exist without these maps.
Of course, the open source approach of OSM with mostly unpaid volunteers is again able to show its potential.
Everyone agrees gmaps has the best data imagery, plus street view - so why not make people pay for it accordingly. I really don't see a problem with this. On top of that people finally receive proper support from google once significant sums are involved.
Seems that Google has been proven completely wrong with their pricing. They're targeting the bigger companies, which don't see shy at all to reach out for alternatives which offer equal quality and accuracy. Once these companies switch, Gmaps will also lose its "trusty" image. As long as the competition will keep up with providing easy integration, and API functionality, it will no longer be the #1 choice for the bigger companies. And they're not going to get their income from smaller, unless they drastically change their price-model.
OpenLayers is so great though for these kind of sites, that just need that extra dimension of detail on maps.
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.
I wonder if the perception would be different if Google Maps were a standalone startup developing a world class mapping product. Where the common manta would be along the lines of double your pricing.
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