Google maps api costs [modified]
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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
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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. -
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
You might search for some competitors. This last summer I had a person who wanted custom mapping and there where three avenues we were looking at, but I do not remember them at the moment. I know one was virtual earth, but IIRC, it was risky because you paid per "tile" pumped out.
Rocky <>< Recent Blog Post: Obama or McCain? Really, voting for him? Thinking about Silverlight? www.SilverlightCity.com
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You might search for some competitors. This last summer I had a person who wanted custom mapping and there where three avenues we were looking at, but I do not remember them at the moment. I know one was virtual earth, but IIRC, it was risky because you paid per "tile" pumped out.
Rocky <>< Recent Blog Post: Obama or McCain? Really, voting for him? Thinking about Silverlight? www.SilverlightCity.com
-
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
Part of the mapping costs goes to the provision of the base data. This is a large area of where the costs come into play - they license the data from the source, and this licensing cost gets passed onto you. Of course, if there was some place you could get base data for free or cheaply[^], this would help you with your own application (if you could find a GIS display engine of course).
Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.
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I am, it's all detailed in this previous post[^].
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
Sorry, missed the link :-O
Rocky <>< Recent Blog Post: Obama or McCain? Really, voting for him? Thinking about Silverlight? www.SilverlightCity.com