Google maps api costs [modified]
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Wow, as you may know I've been looking[^] for a mapping solution to integrate simple online mapping into my commercially sold (not in-house) desktop and asp.net application. I just got word back from Google on licensing costs for the commercial version that allows you to use it with your own commercial (for public sale) applications. They still don't offer any method to license within a desktop application, only on a single web server on a domain but the price is pretty astounding:
1.) Google Maps API Premier
Available for Public and Non-Public websites and applicationsPricing (per year-paid in full at signing)
* $10,000 for 2 million page views per year
* $20,000 for 4 million page views per year
* $30,000 for 6 million page views per year
* $40,000 for 10 million page views per year
* Please call for pricing above 10 million page views per year
Page View means a single load of the Google Maps Javascript by the end user's browser:wtf: If I were Google sitting on all that data that I had to pay others licensing costs for I'd be finding every possible way to sell it. I countered with a proposal that they modify the licensing system so it would work with desktop applications, *not* drop the Google Earth desktop application COM API as they are proposing so windows apps could use it and allow a system whereby the end user who purchases software that integrate with Google Earth be able to pay a reasonable monthly subscription fee affordable to a small business / private individual. It seems all they care about are large corporate sites with a single server, there are only so many of those but there are potentially millions of desktop application users for all manner of different markets. We have thousands globally that would sign up for such a service. Crazy!
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
modified on Wednesday, October 22, 2008 12:34 PM
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Wow, as you may know I've been looking[^] for a mapping solution to integrate simple online mapping into my commercially sold (not in-house) desktop and asp.net application. I just got word back from Google on licensing costs for the commercial version that allows you to use it with your own commercial (for public sale) applications. They still don't offer any method to license within a desktop application, only on a single web server on a domain but the price is pretty astounding:
1.) Google Maps API Premier
Available for Public and Non-Public websites and applicationsPricing (per year-paid in full at signing)
* $10,000 for 2 million page views per year
* $20,000 for 4 million page views per year
* $30,000 for 6 million page views per year
* $40,000 for 10 million page views per year
* Please call for pricing above 10 million page views per year
Page View means a single load of the Google Maps Javascript by the end user's browser:wtf: If I were Google sitting on all that data that I had to pay others licensing costs for I'd be finding every possible way to sell it. I countered with a proposal that they modify the licensing system so it would work with desktop applications, *not* drop the Google Earth desktop application COM API as they are proposing so windows apps could use it and allow a system whereby the end user who purchases software that integrate with Google Earth be able to pay a reasonable monthly subscription fee affordable to a small business / private individual. It seems all they care about are large corporate sites with a single server, there are only so many of those but there are potentially millions of desktop application users for all manner of different markets. We have thousands globally that would sign up for such a service. Crazy!
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
modified on Wednesday, October 22, 2008 12:34 PM
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Hmm, that doesn't seem so bad. If you've got 200 subscribers at $20 a month each, that's $48k a year in revenue - that easily justifies the cost. Cheers, Drew.
Drew Stainton wrote:
Hmm, that doesn't seem so bad.
But, that's 50 cents per page view.
Drew Stainton wrote:
200 subscribers at $20 a month each, that's $48k a year in revenue - that easily justifies the cost
Very true, probably get more than just 200 subscribers if the application is something folks are looking for.
"The clue train passed his station without stopping." - John Simmons / outlaw programmer "Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon "Not only do you continue to babble nonsense, you can't even correctly remember the nonsense you babbled just minutes ago." - Rob Graham
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Wow, as you may know I've been looking[^] for a mapping solution to integrate simple online mapping into my commercially sold (not in-house) desktop and asp.net application. I just got word back from Google on licensing costs for the commercial version that allows you to use it with your own commercial (for public sale) applications. They still don't offer any method to license within a desktop application, only on a single web server on a domain but the price is pretty astounding:
1.) Google Maps API Premier
Available for Public and Non-Public websites and applicationsPricing (per year-paid in full at signing)
* $10,000 for 2 million page views per year
* $20,000 for 4 million page views per year
* $30,000 for 6 million page views per year
* $40,000 for 10 million page views per year
* Please call for pricing above 10 million page views per year
Page View means a single load of the Google Maps Javascript by the end user's browser:wtf: If I were Google sitting on all that data that I had to pay others licensing costs for I'd be finding every possible way to sell it. I countered with a proposal that they modify the licensing system so it would work with desktop applications, *not* drop the Google Earth desktop application COM API as they are proposing so windows apps could use it and allow a system whereby the end user who purchases software that integrate with Google Earth be able to pay a reasonable monthly subscription fee affordable to a small business / private individual. It seems all they care about are large corporate sites with a single server, there are only so many of those but there are potentially millions of desktop application users for all manner of different markets. We have thousands globally that would sign up for such a service. Crazy!
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
modified on Wednesday, October 22, 2008 12:34 PM
Compared to ESRI, the primary GIS Software company, that is nothing. If you want to see a flood of unhappy people google "ESRI" and "licensing"! I warned you!
_____________________________________________________________________ Our developers never release code. Rather, it tends to escape, pillaging the countryside all around. The Enlightenment Project (paraphrased comment) Visit Me at GISDevCafe
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Drew Stainton wrote:
Hmm, that doesn't seem so bad.
But, that's 50 cents per page view.
Drew Stainton wrote:
200 subscribers at $20 a month each, that's $48k a year in revenue - that easily justifies the cost
Very true, probably get more than just 200 subscribers if the application is something folks are looking for.
"The clue train passed his station without stopping." - John Simmons / outlaw programmer "Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon "Not only do you continue to babble nonsense, you can't even correctly remember the nonsense you babbled just minutes ago." - Rob Graham
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Compared to ESRI, the primary GIS Software company, that is nothing. If you want to see a flood of unhappy people google "ESRI" and "licensing"! I warned you!
_____________________________________________________________________ Our developers never release code. Rather, it tends to escape, pillaging the countryside all around. The Enlightenment Project (paraphrased comment) Visit Me at GISDevCafe
Aaron VanWieren wrote:
you want to see a flood of unhappy people google "ESRI" and "licensing"
Hmmmm. I only see things about licensing, not really anything of folks ranting about it. Any specific link?
"The clue train passed his station without stopping." - John Simmons / outlaw programmer "Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon "Not only do you continue to babble nonsense, you can't even correctly remember the nonsense you babbled just minutes ago." - Rob Graham
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Paul Conrad wrote:
But, that's 50 cents per page view.
How do you figure? I get 0.5 cents per page view. Cheers, Drew.
You're right, Drew. Did a recalc and I must've gone two digits too far earlier :-O 1/2 cent per page view is pretty good, then. Cheaper than printing to the printer.
"The clue train passed his station without stopping." - John Simmons / outlaw programmer "Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon "Not only do you continue to babble nonsense, you can't even correctly remember the nonsense you babbled just minutes ago." - Rob Graham
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Hmm, that doesn't seem so bad. If you've got 200 subscribers at $20 a month each, that's $48k a year in revenue - that easily justifies the cost. Cheers, Drew.
No you misunderstand, I'm not setting up some kind of website for end users, I make commercial software people buy and install on their own computers. I just want to integrate mapping into my app so that the end users can use it. Currently with Googles licensing system every one of my thousands of users world wide would need to pay 10,000 dollars at minimum to be able to use the mapping integration in my app. These are tiny to medium sized businesses who might pay as little as a few hundred dollars for our license. Google has no licensing model whereby the end users of our app could pay a reasonable monthly fee for access to the service. They only care about two things: giant corporate customers and making headlines with freebies that can't be used for commercial apps.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
-
Wow, as you may know I've been looking[^] for a mapping solution to integrate simple online mapping into my commercially sold (not in-house) desktop and asp.net application. I just got word back from Google on licensing costs for the commercial version that allows you to use it with your own commercial (for public sale) applications. They still don't offer any method to license within a desktop application, only on a single web server on a domain but the price is pretty astounding:
1.) Google Maps API Premier
Available for Public and Non-Public websites and applicationsPricing (per year-paid in full at signing)
* $10,000 for 2 million page views per year
* $20,000 for 4 million page views per year
* $30,000 for 6 million page views per year
* $40,000 for 10 million page views per year
* Please call for pricing above 10 million page views per year
Page View means a single load of the Google Maps Javascript by the end user's browser:wtf: If I were Google sitting on all that data that I had to pay others licensing costs for I'd be finding every possible way to sell it. I countered with a proposal that they modify the licensing system so it would work with desktop applications, *not* drop the Google Earth desktop application COM API as they are proposing so windows apps could use it and allow a system whereby the end user who purchases software that integrate with Google Earth be able to pay a reasonable monthly subscription fee affordable to a small business / private individual. It seems all they care about are large corporate sites with a single server, there are only so many of those but there are potentially millions of desktop application users for all manner of different markets. We have thousands globally that would sign up for such a service. Crazy!
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
modified on Wednesday, October 22, 2008 12:34 PM
What's stopping you from setting up your own server and pointing your app at that? Then use Google / Live / that wiki thing / whatever can handle the load for a reasonable cost. No installation, no tying your users to the vagaries of a particular service provider (apart from yourself...) ...or is there something in the various ToS that prevents it?
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Aaron VanWieren wrote:
you want to see a flood of unhappy people google "ESRI" and "licensing"
Hmmmm. I only see things about licensing, not really anything of folks ranting about it. Any specific link?
"The clue train passed his station without stopping." - John Simmons / outlaw programmer "Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon "Not only do you continue to babble nonsense, you can't even correctly remember the nonsense you babbled just minutes ago." - Rob Graham
Sorry, I will have to look. I run in those circles so I here it all the time from others in the industry. Sorry for being a little loose there. Trust me, ESRI is the worse when it comes to overbloated licensing models at ridiculous prices. Yeah, guess google searching is not as easy on this subject as it used to be. Aaron
_____________________________________________________________________ Our developers never release code. Rather, it tends to escape, pillaging the countryside all around. The Enlightenment Project (paraphrased comment) Visit Me at GISDevCafe
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Sorry, I will have to look. I run in those circles so I here it all the time from others in the industry. Sorry for being a little loose there. Trust me, ESRI is the worse when it comes to overbloated licensing models at ridiculous prices. Yeah, guess google searching is not as easy on this subject as it used to be. Aaron
_____________________________________________________________________ Our developers never release code. Rather, it tends to escape, pillaging the countryside all around. The Enlightenment Project (paraphrased comment) Visit Me at GISDevCafe
No worries. I probably didn't dig deep enough. I am always curious when ESRI pops up in forums since their headquarters in Redlands is just right down the highway from me, about 20 minutes or so.
"The clue train passed his station without stopping." - John Simmons / outlaw programmer "Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon "Not only do you continue to babble nonsense, you can't even correctly remember the nonsense you babbled just minutes ago." - Rob Graham
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No you misunderstand, I'm not setting up some kind of website for end users, I make commercial software people buy and install on their own computers. I just want to integrate mapping into my app so that the end users can use it. Currently with Googles licensing system every one of my thousands of users world wide would need to pay 10,000 dollars at minimum to be able to use the mapping integration in my app. These are tiny to medium sized businesses who might pay as little as a few hundred dollars for our license. Google has no licensing model whereby the end users of our app could pay a reasonable monthly fee for access to the service. They only care about two things: giant corporate customers and making headlines with freebies that can't be used for commercial apps.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
I guess I just don't understand. Here's what I was thinking: 1) You pay Google 10k for a license to use their API and data on your website. 2) You setup a web service that returns maps and directions when provided with data from your desktop app. 3) You add a mapping part to your desktop app that works with that web service. Maybe Google limits use of their API and data in a webservice. In that case you setup your app to request a page from your site and parse the returned HTML (no different that what a web browser does). Is that not what you had in mind? Cheers, Drew.
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No worries. I probably didn't dig deep enough. I am always curious when ESRI pops up in forums since their headquarters in Redlands is just right down the highway from me, about 20 minutes or so.
"The clue train passed his station without stopping." - John Simmons / outlaw programmer "Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon "Not only do you continue to babble nonsense, you can't even correctly remember the nonsense you babbled just minutes ago." - Rob Graham
Their products are pretty good. The problem is that they are one of the only enterprise level players in the market, so they have enjoyed a near monopolistic environment. Unfortunately they believe developers only work on the front end and less in the back end of an application. I cant really say too much bad about them as they have provided a product that works fairly well and have developed an industry. I have just worked with them so long that price and licensing complexity have been major complaints. Aaron
_____________________________________________________________________ Our developers never release code. Rather, it tends to escape, pillaging the countryside all around. The Enlightenment Project (paraphrased comment) Visit Me at GISDevCafe
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What's stopping you from setting up your own server and pointing your app at that? Then use Google / Live / that wiki thing / whatever can handle the load for a reasonable cost. No installation, no tying your users to the vagaries of a particular service provider (apart from yourself...) ...or is there something in the various ToS that prevents it?
Licensing prevents it in most cases and our customers are distributed globally so we would need to set up multiple local servers for performance and there would be very high bandwidth costs. We've considered it but it's not in any way a clean solution.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
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I guess I just don't understand. Here's what I was thinking: 1) You pay Google 10k for a license to use their API and data on your website. 2) You setup a web service that returns maps and directions when provided with data from your desktop app. 3) You add a mapping part to your desktop app that works with that web service. Maybe Google limits use of their API and data in a webservice. In that case you setup your app to request a page from your site and parse the returned HTML (no different that what a web browser does). Is that not what you had in mind? Cheers, Drew.
Oh, I see what you mean. That is a possibility that was discussed but we have customers globally so the performance and bandwidth costs would be an issue. Also we would really prefer a clean solution where we have as little involvement as possible, we just write the UI and the rest is between the end user and the mapping provider. Adding all that layer of extra code plus having a server based in the U.S. only would probably be impractical. We're looking at Mapquest which does have an excellent api and really is interested in desktop application integration but unspecified costs which I'm waiting to hear back on, some of our U.S. based competitors use it (I'm guessing they haven't paid for a commercial license but you never know :) ), unfortunately it might really only contain detailed maps for inside the U.S. which would be a problem for about half our customers.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
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Licensing prevents it in most cases and our customers are distributed globally so we would need to set up multiple local servers for performance and there would be very high bandwidth costs. We've considered it but it's not in any way a clean solution.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
John C wrote:
Licensing prevents it in most cases and our customers are distributed globally so we would need to set up multiple local servers for performance and there would be very high bandwidth costs
Hmm... Surely they'd still be requesting the heavy map-data from Google (or whoever)? You'd just need a host to serve a tiny bit of dynamic HTML to couch the scripts in.
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Oh, I see what you mean. That is a possibility that was discussed but we have customers globally so the performance and bandwidth costs would be an issue. Also we would really prefer a clean solution where we have as little involvement as possible, we just write the UI and the rest is between the end user and the mapping provider. Adding all that layer of extra code plus having a server based in the U.S. only would probably be impractical. We're looking at Mapquest which does have an excellent api and really is interested in desktop application integration but unspecified costs which I'm waiting to hear back on, some of our U.S. based competitors use it (I'm guessing they haven't paid for a commercial license but you never know :) ), unfortunately it might really only contain detailed maps for inside the U.S. which would be a problem for about half our customers.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
I know where you're coming from. I've got two app's used by the BC Government, one is an ArcMap extension that has to work disconnected, so each client gets about 2 Gigs worth of data. It makes doing the installs a pain. The other app would benefit a great deal from a map component, but the licensing costs are too high for the number of users. I've never looked at Mapquest - keep us updated when you hear back. Cheers, Drew.
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John C wrote:
Licensing prevents it in most cases and our customers are distributed globally so we would need to set up multiple local servers for performance and there would be very high bandwidth costs
Hmm... Surely they'd still be requesting the heavy map-data from Google (or whoever)? You'd just need a host to serve a tiny bit of dynamic HTML to couch the scripts in.
Possibly but it's still a whack of cash to spend up front and we're committed to it every year for eternity, also a lot of new accounting systems to put in place behind the scenes for us, currently we sell our software once through a payment processing company and that's it, no ongoing charges. So we have no business model for dealing with that type of business and we'd also need to develop a system to enforce who paid or not for something that we didn't really care about making any money off in the first place. On top of all that who is to say what their license might say in future that prevents us from doing this. We could be suddenly cut off without warning, Google is *extremely* cagey in their license terms and deliberately hazy, their famous for that in this particular area of the mapping api. One thing that has stood us well over the years is sticking like glue to our core product and making it easy for others to make money off of doing add-on's using our free developers API and providing other services like app hosting, installation hand holding etc. We are a small company, we know what we can do well given our resources and we know intimately when we shouldn't touch something with a ten foot pole and this is one of those things.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
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Wow, as you may know I've been looking[^] for a mapping solution to integrate simple online mapping into my commercially sold (not in-house) desktop and asp.net application. I just got word back from Google on licensing costs for the commercial version that allows you to use it with your own commercial (for public sale) applications. They still don't offer any method to license within a desktop application, only on a single web server on a domain but the price is pretty astounding:
1.) Google Maps API Premier
Available for Public and Non-Public websites and applicationsPricing (per year-paid in full at signing)
* $10,000 for 2 million page views per year
* $20,000 for 4 million page views per year
* $30,000 for 6 million page views per year
* $40,000 for 10 million page views per year
* Please call for pricing above 10 million page views per year
Page View means a single load of the Google Maps Javascript by the end user's browser:wtf: If I were Google sitting on all that data that I had to pay others licensing costs for I'd be finding every possible way to sell it. I countered with a proposal that they modify the licensing system so it would work with desktop applications, *not* drop the Google Earth desktop application COM API as they are proposing so windows apps could use it and allow a system whereby the end user who purchases software that integrate with Google Earth be able to pay a reasonable monthly subscription fee affordable to a small business / private individual. It seems all they care about are large corporate sites with a single server, there are only so many of those but there are potentially millions of desktop application users for all manner of different markets. We have thousands globally that would sign up for such a service. Crazy!
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
modified on Wednesday, October 22, 2008 12:34 PM
Let me know because I have a perfect desktop app that would make hundreds of thousands of dollars and all it requires is easy mapping.
Need software developed? Offering C# development all over the United States, ERL GLOBAL, Inc is the only call you will have to make.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. -- Ernest Hemingway
Most of this sig is for Google, not ego. -
Let me know because I have a perfect desktop app that would make hundreds of thousands of dollars and all it requires is easy mapping.
Need software developed? Offering C# development all over the United States, ERL GLOBAL, Inc is the only call you will have to make.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. -- Ernest Hemingway
Most of this sig is for Google, not ego.First, supply a profit sharing agreement :rolleyes:
"The clue train passed his station without stopping." - John Simmons / outlaw programmer "Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon "Not only do you continue to babble nonsense, you can't even correctly remember the nonsense you babbled just minutes ago." - Rob Graham