[HN Gopher] New Map APIs from Google
___________________________________________________________________
New Map APIs from Google
Author : nicolodev
Score : 225 points
Date : 2023-08-30 09:35 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cloud.google.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (cloud.google.com)
| efields wrote:
| 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.
| kmlx wrote:
| will these be available in the Google Maps app?
| diwakar2008 wrote:
| 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 ...
| Maxious wrote:
| For India the source is Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB)
| https://support.google.com/maps/answer/11270845
| diwakar2008 wrote:
| Thank you!
| danjc wrote:
| Wow first pollen, now solar. Talk about building resilient
| communities.
| efields wrote:
| Climate change brogrammer starter pack.
| londons_explore wrote:
| 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".
| blamazon wrote:
| Check out overpass turbo if you haven't already:
|
| https://overpass-turbo.eu/
| xinayder wrote:
| The answer is in your post. Use OpenStreetMap. It's free as
| long as you respect the dataset license and you can do a lot of
| things with it.
|
| If you use OSM, please consider contributing back by either
| spreading word or adding more data to the map itself.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| OSM is great but it cannot answer those questions accurately.
| dvdkon wrote:
| Neither can Google maps. Many countries have official maps,
| some are even open data, but even those don't have perfect
| coverage of "unofficial" features like footpaths.
|
| Here in the Czech Republic, a combination of OSM and
| official data (ZABAGED) is the best bet, somewhere else it
| could be Google's data, if they made it available.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| True, but that's kind of a chicken-egg problem. If OSM were
| more popular the resulting influx of contributors and other
| resources would solve the data quality problem pretty
| quickly.
| dheera wrote:
| > adding more data to the map itself
|
| I'd love to but it would eat into my work time and I'd get a
| bad performance review.
| nycdatasci wrote:
| This is pretty close: https://overturemaps.org/
| pseg134 wrote:
| Yeah and then someone would just export all of the data if they
| offered low level access. I can't think of any reason google
| would take that risk for minimal API fees.
| londons_explore wrote:
| For most of the data, it's already possible to siphon it off.
| Just browse with a instrumented browser and you can download
| all the 3D map data for a city in a few minutes from a single
| session, simply emulating a user zooming around the city.
|
| Business data can likewise be methodologically downloaded,
| thousands of businesses per user account per day doesn't hit
| their rate limits.
|
| The polygons of roads and stuff are also easily extracted
| from a browser.
|
| And the Android/iOS mobile apps allow you to 'download for
| offline use', which is obfusticated but not properly
| encrypted.
|
| Charging $1 per 1000 records for API access would cost
| massive amounts for a competitor to download all the data -
| and besides, maps data is fairly easy to hide a few erroneous
| entries in and catch anyone using the data to start a clone
| of Google Maps.
| mtmail wrote:
| > Business data can likewise be methodologically downloaded
|
| Google doesn't allow to store the data permanently. Just
| because it's technically possible doesn't make it legal.
|
| From the Google Places API terms "you must not pre-fetch,
| index, store, or cache any Content except under the limited
| conditions stated in the terms"
|
| "You can display Places API results on a Google Map, or
| without a map. If you want to display Places API results on
| a map, then these results must be displayed on a Google
| Map. It is prohibited to use Places API data on a map that
| is not a Google map."
| londons_explore wrote:
| I was thinking of users who just wanted to take all the
| data and ignore any T&C's. Since the Linkedin web-
| scraping case, T&C's on data on a public website
| effectively doesn't apply anyway.
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| They actually ended up losing that case, but they went to
| extreme lengths such as using proxies after getting
| banned and such.
|
| IIRC the important thing was that horrible CFAA law can't
| be brought into consideration because the supreme court
| shot that down.
| cornedor wrote:
| I don't think mapping data from Google Maps is accurate enough
| to do this. Perhaps you're better off using a service that uses
| OSM data. But it depends on the region and use case.
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| Does OSM really have more information than google maps?
|
| Surely google has a lot more stuff than what the webapp
| shows.
| bombolo wrote:
| Depends on the area... for example in my area OSM has all
| the mountain paths that completely do not exist on google
| maps.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| Depends on area and information type.
| cheschire wrote:
| I wonder if it's because there isn't that much map data to be
| had, not like search data, so no matter what price they set
| their competitors could siphon off all their data for
| relatively cheap.
|
| And sure, a user agreement is a way to litigate after the fact
| (assuming you catch them in the act) but once they have the
| data it doesn't matter.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I suspect the reason they don't do this is because they want
| more pricing control.
|
| For their solar API for example, they know how much time
| solar surveyors spend getting roof profiles, and they can
| therefore price their product to maximize revenue.
|
| However if they just let you access all the data for any
| usecase, there will be plenty of people who pay Google a few
| bucks for data that might cost millions of dollars to obtain
| any other way.
| karussell wrote:
| > Give me a route from A to B, but not via any unpaved streets
|
| With GraphHopper you can customize routes in many different
| ways and e.g. prefer paved roads:
| https://graphhopper.com/maps/?point=50.963703%2C13.777981&po...
|
| Click on the gear button in the top left to see, edit and
| disable the customization.
|
| Also the Isochrone or Shortest Path Tree (spt) API can be used
| to answer "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" (fetch the ATM
| locations e.g. via overpass or a reverse Geocoding API)
|
| Note, that I'm one of the founders of GraphHopper.
| petre wrote:
| Graphhopper is great. Thank you.
| punnerud wrote:
| You can convert OSM into Sqlite3 and query on it. I build an
| example with SQLite to convert from coordinates to address.
|
| Then I had to find closest addresses up to a limit.
|
| https://github.com/punnerud/rgcosm
|
| Some some also build on it with parameters:
| https://github.com/BlackCatDevel0per/rgcosm
| danpalmer wrote:
| I get why this feels like a good idea, and I've wanted similar
| myself, but having built APIs, ensuring that users use them
| correctly is _hard_. Designing APIs that are hard to use
| wrongly is tricky, but a much better approach than
| documentation.
|
| There are lots of other reasons and it's easy to jump to Google
| wanting to protect their data, but creating correctly usable
| APIs is a generally applicable reason that is perhaps more
| charitable.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Whats wrong with "all maps stuff is in this huge bigquery
| table. Here are a bunch of example queries to get you going."
|
| SELECT business_name, business_phone FROM pois WHERE
| business_type = 'bank' and place_review_count > 10 ORDER BY
| distance(Location('New York'), location) ASC LIMIT 10;
|
| Doesn't seem particularly hard for users to use 'right' -
| most people using an API will have some technical background
| and be able to use that.
| danpalmer wrote:
| Example, purely hypothetical for _this_ scenario, but based
| on a real experience I had recently...
|
| What if there was a data source that went into this from a
| third party? What if that third party had requirements
| about the timeline of removing data? This could be because
| it contained user-generated content and something was found
| to be offensive or even illegal, or it could be because it
| contained something proprietary that needed to be correctly
| licenced, all sorts of possibilities.
|
| If you provide a data dump, you then need any integrators
| to add a data refresh process. That's an additional step
| that many won't do. Now you can't honour contracts or
| potentially legal requirements.
|
| Sure you can document this, sure you can put it in
| contracts, but that may not be enough.
| amichal wrote:
| "map stuff" is much harder to understand than your query
| implies. As an example
|
| Have you tried understanding all the possible things that
| you can get in 'address_components' depending on the input
| params, the region you are querying from, the region you
| results are coming from, the geopolitical situation on that
| data, the entity that was matched etc etc
|
| https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geocoding/
| r...
|
| https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geocoding/
| r...
|
| Don't forget entities in side of other entities like
| businesses within a mall.
|
| Don't forget that the user might want a specific service
| from the bank. The "bank" label doesn't tell you if they
| accept street traffic, have live tellers, are just an ATM
| or a corporate office etc etc.
| londons_explore wrote:
| This is easy to solve... Just publish 'views' of the data
| simplified for common usecases, and also offer the raw
| data for those who like joining 50 tables to know extreme
| corner cases like if the bar down the road's wheelchair
| accessible toilet will be open during the summertime hour
| shift.
| michaelt wrote:
| From a business perspective, presumably they would like to
| charge radically different amounts for only slightly
| different queries.
|
| A realtor who stands to make $10,000 on a house sale might
| happily pay a few bucks to know the nearest schools, shops,
| bus stops, broadband availability etc for a property
| listing, but only want to do one or two searches per week.
|
| A lawyer closing the sale of a house might happily pay $50
| for a report on flood risks and nearby planned
| developments, if it's the most reliable data available.
|
| At the other end of the spectrum, finding the nearest EV
| chargers for a vehicle navigation system? Users don't pay
| per search in vehicle navigation systems, even a tenth of a
| cent per search is too much.
|
| Companies who are willing to talk to their customers
| resolve this by the sales team drawing up a different
| contract, and maybe even a completely different pricing
| scheme, for every customer. But as Google wouldn't deign to
| talk to a customer over a mere $100k/year they don't have
| this option.
|
| From a practical perspective, structured map data often
| ends up with a ridiculously complicated schema, to
| accurately represent a reality where rules can be
| arbitrarily complicated. There are roads which don't allow
| 'trade or business vehicles except permit holders and
| taxis'; other roads change direction depending on the time
| of day; a junction might have some legal turn restrictions
| which don't apply to emergency vehicles, but some physical
| or logical turn restrictions which do. A schema complex
| enough to represent that sort of thing correctly will be
| hard to query.
| pc86 wrote:
| > but having built APIs, ensuring that users use them
| correctly is _hard_
|
| Having used APIs, I don't really care if the organization who
| built it thinks I'm using it "incorrectly" as long as I'm
| getting the data out of it that I want. As long as I'm paying
| for it, I honestly don't think they have the right to say I'm
| doing it "wrong."
| Shrezzing wrote:
| > I don't really care if the organization who built it
| thinks I'm using it "incorrectly" as long as I'm getting
| the data out of it that I want
|
| That's the way I think about it for stable APIs. But for
| API that are under constant development, using it
| "incorrectly" often results in your feature being
| inadvertently broken by developers who are unaware of your
| use case.
| danpalmer wrote:
| I built a checkout API. Using it incorrectly could easily
| result in a user ordering items they didn't want to, paying
| an amount they didn't expect, selecting the wrong shipping,
| billing the wrong card, and so on.
|
| Building the API in such a way that it was hard for clients
| to get this wrong was a very key concern for us.
|
| Separately though, I gave a better motivating example in my
| other reply here. tldr: what you might be paying for may
| come with stipulations that are not clear in the data -
| such as how up to date data is when used. Those
| stipulations may come through many layers of data source,
| not necessarily from the layer you pay.
| [deleted]
| l5870uoo9y wrote:
| 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.
| leesalminen wrote:
| I remember a few years ago when the address autocomplete API
| went from free to thousands of dollars. That was a surprise
| bill I won't be forgetting anytime soon.
| Racing0461 wrote:
| 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.
| dahwolf wrote:
| 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.
| moneywoes wrote:
| Are these free?
| dang wrote:
| Recent and related:
|
| _Announcing the Pollen API_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37304803 - Aug 2023 (79
| comments)
| breakingrules wrote:
| [dead]
| Omnipresent wrote:
| 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.
| Gigachad wrote:
| You want live air quality data without internet?
| Rygian wrote:
| On Android (and iPhone I guess) OsmAnd is a navigation app that
| works offline (with map data from OpenStreetMap) and exposes an
| API as well as examples on how to use its core in other apps
| [1].
|
| [1] https://osmand.net/docs/build-it/
| blamazon wrote:
| OsmAnd is amazing! I use it for gravel biking and off road
| driving and it's just incredible at doing turn by turn
| navigation off a GPX file offline.
| dang wrote:
| 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
| udioron wrote:
| 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.
| irvinej00 wrote:
| Just waiting for the price hike once they have a monopoly in that
| niche
| dartharva wrote:
| 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.
| Rygian wrote:
| And yet no news on API to collect location data shared privately
| by friends and family
| (https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/62938530)
| [deleted]
| wiredfool wrote:
| Solar potential is available at the global solar atlas
| (https://globalsolaratlas.info/map), including downloadable
| datasets.
| jd3 wrote:
| DC uses Palmetto mapdwell, which is the solar potential
| analytics platform + api that pepco, comed, exelon, bge, peco,
| etc. all use.
|
| https://mapdwell.com/en/solar/dc
|
| This is the data that I took to my building's HOA board when
| proposing we retrofit our rooftop with solar.
| runako wrote:
| That's a neat project. A key difference is the Google dataset
| resolves down to the address level (at least in the US). So it
| is able to account for tree cover over individual buildings,
| which can be determinative to the economics of a solar install.
| jeffbee wrote:
| The demo in the article is way beyond this. They have elevation
| models of each house and optimize number and placement of
| panels.
| euekebrb wrote:
| [flagged]
| nilsmagnus wrote:
| How is an api for Pollen, Solar and Air Quality worthless noisy
| datasets?
| AlbertCory wrote:
| 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...
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| psadri wrote:
| I wish YouTube would use some AI to pick more appropriate
| points in the video to insert their ads. The current viewing
| experience with ads is simply too jarring. Maybe that's the
| point :-)?
| miroljub wrote:
| Not interested.
|
| The main risk is, it's Google, and it _will_ be discontinued or
| over-monetized eventually.
|
| Better look for more reliable alternatives.
| ch_sm wrote:
| Google Places API is already sooo expensive, it's silly.
| martinkostov wrote:
| When will such information be available in the Maps app?
| cbg0 wrote:
| The European Commission also has a nifty tool for estimating PV
| performance: https://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvg_tools/en/tools.html
| silvestrov wrote:
| Seems like it just use simple geo location and does not take
| dust and rain into account.
|
| More sun but a lot of dust can be less efficient than less sun
| but no dust.
| csunbird wrote:
| But, it is free and it is already done. It is a good tool to
| estimate what would be your gain from solar power.
|
| And obviously one of the underrated advantages: It is not
| Google.
| intrasight wrote:
| 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.
| lea900 wrote:
| [dead]
| redeux wrote:
| 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.
| onli wrote:
| Just don't disregard the warning in the other comments about
| google not being a reliable API provider. Especially with maps
| and weather APIs Google's track record is abysmal, and I
| personally had to swap out APIs for a FOSS project of mine
| because their API went away.
| cornfutes wrote:
| 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.
| joshstrange wrote:
| 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/
| [deleted]
| Woozzy wrote:
| Have you heard about https://www.felt.com or
| https://umap.openstreetmap.fr ? Both run on OSM and are free
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| Does anyone else have a solution for the satellite layer? I was
| using MapLibre [0] then needed direct-on-the-ground images
| which made me convert to Google Maps.
|
| [0] https://maplibre.org/
| blamazon wrote:
| For a potential USA-only solution, (I don't know if it will
| fit or be usable for your use case) the USDA provides aerial
| imagery under the "National Agricultural Imagery Program."
| [1]
|
| [1]: https://www.fsa.usda.gov/Assets/USDA-FSA-
| Public/usdafiles/AP...
| lelandbatey wrote:
| If you're willing to pay for it, a company I worked for
| switched from Google Maps to TomTom maps, and TomTom does
| offer aerial image maps. I don't remember the specifics of
| exactly how much cheaper TomTom was vs Google Maps, but I
| remember it being on the order of an 80% discount.
| brookst wrote:
| Which is funny because it seems misaligned with Google's
| business model. Shouldn't they be the cheapest option, and
| generating revenue by ad placements in 3rd party apps?
|
| I suppose the ad value of static images in tiles is low, and
| there's no way to ensure that developers honor JavaScript or
| other interactivity for ads?
| nazcan wrote:
| It's hard to ensure, and if a developer wants to, they can
| show ads themselves.
| icoder wrote:
| I once was on a project that started out with OSM, but then
| realised there was nothing that compared to Google's Places
| API (might be different now) in terms of completeness and
| correctness. And your are not (or at least were not) allowed
| to use Places API on top of / in combination with OSM).
|
| That's what you get when your consumer directed products are
| 'free' and thus widely used and thus lot's of stake holders
| ensure their place is correctly in their database (probably
| in combination with other, possibly community based,
| efforts).
|
| We relied heavily on Places API and thus were bound to Google
| Maps API, we did just not see a reasonable way around that.
| skkdhfke wrote:
| _> That 's what you get when your consumer directed
| products are 'free' and thus widely used and thus lot's of
| stake holders ensure their place is correctly in their
| database (probably in combination with other, possibly
| community based, efforts)_
|
| Would it be crazy yo have the government maintain such a
| database and make it available to anyone? It seems like the
| ideal place to join forces and avoid data duplication.
| birdstheword5 wrote:
| In the UK, ordnance survey does this. It's better than
| osm for most things, and worse for others
| icoder wrote:
| Well we were looking world wide so that would be a lot of
| governments. Having said that, here in the Netherlands I
| could see it happen, the gouvernement does have (had)
| quite a few open data initiatives.
| ap99 wrote:
| Think about your interactions with the government, e.g.
| getting a drivers license, passport, filing taxes,
| parking tickets, etc.
|
| Do you want those people managing something like maps or
| places on maps?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Think about your interactions with _Google_ , and the
| question becomes less clear.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Those services work very well in many countries. In the
| United States we have one party that likes to show
| government doesn't work by crippling, defunding, and
| generally making government programs worse when they get
| power so that you pay private companies for those save
| services. Often times companies they have a connection
| with.
| baloki wrote:
| In the UK the government sort of does manage a map that's
| used as the basis of a lot of others maps called
| Ordinance Survey Maps.
| burkaman wrote:
| Yes, all digital interactions I have with the government,
| like renewing my license or paying a parking ticket, are
| generally very quick and easy. Filling out my taxes is
| not particularly fun, but that isn't the IRS IT
| department's fault, and the actual act of submitting them
| online is again very quick and easy. I have also had very
| good experiences with government public datasets
| (examples at https://catalog.data.gov/dataset).
|
| At my job I use APIs from the EPA and EIA, and they are
| stable, well-documented, and generally pleasant to use. I
| can also email an actual human with questions and get
| quick responses, which I can't do with Google. I have no
| concerns about the APIs ever disappearing because the PM
| got bored or wanted a promotion, or because they couldn't
| extract enough money from users.
|
| I think whoever manages these services would do an
| excellent job running a mapping service or Places API,
| although obviously it would be hard to get traction now
| that Google Maps is so established.
|
| Some of the features that make Google Maps useful, like
| GPS and public transit arrival times, are already based
| on government services.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I have indeed paid my federal, state, and local taxes
| online, and it was not too terrible.
|
| On the other hand, the USPTO patent database is nearly
| impossible for anyone other than a professional to
| navigate. Their search sucks.
|
| Since you mentioned taxes: the fact that Intuit and H&R
| Block have successfully prevented the IRS from doing what
| nearly _everyone_ wants: file your taxes for you, for
| free. For the vast majority of taxpayers, they could do
| that, yet the political pressure from paid tax preparers
| have prevented it, at least up to now.
|
| And this illustrates the flaw with your starry-eyed
| Pollyanna-ism: no matter how honest & hard-working the
| bureaucrats might be, they're still accountable to
| corrupt pressures.
|
| The 1950 census data, recently released, also sucks. To
| find one family whose exact address I wasn't sure of, I
| had to manually open about 50 strips of census taker
| daily records and decipher the hand-written names &
| addresses. Merely finding these 50 strips took more
| effort than nearly anyone would exert.
|
| Their Search failed to find the family. I don't anyone
| could figure this out unless they were extremely
| motivated.
|
| And last but certainly not least, let's look at the
| Obamacare website rollout, which got a Cabinet secretary
| fired.
|
| So don't give us a couple good anecdotes and say, "look,
| the government works great!"
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| >Do you want those people managing something like maps or
| places on maps
|
| Yes. The USPS is actually pretty good at it too. They
| even have their own API you can use.
|
| >Think about your interactions with the government
|
| My public roads, building codes, food safety, food
| affordability, stable power grids, advanced medical care,
| space exploration.
|
| The government is plenty capable of doing good things,
| however people letting carefully crafted legislation, get
| passed or even created, that supports private interests
| is a societal illness, not a fundamental issue with
| government capabilities.
| gretch wrote:
| > The USPS is actually pretty good at it too.
|
| In my opinion, the USPS is mostly an advertisement
| delivery system, and every once in a while they deliver a
| very important letter from the IRS so that you have to
| look through all of it.
|
| I don't know how we tolerate this federal system that is
| literally 80% spam advertisements
| cma wrote:
| NASA, NOAA etc. do weather, accuWeather and others use
| federal weather data as the underlying source (and lobby
| and even install themselves in power to try and keep the
| government side less user friendly).
| neuronexmachina wrote:
| Using an example from another country, NZ's LINZ also has
| some great data: https://www.linz.govt.nz/products-
| services/data/types-linz-d...
| martius wrote:
| Google must diversify its source of revenue, that's the
| purpose of hardware, Cloud, Youtube premium and others. It is
| also why they sell access to APIs.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I mean when it comes to interactive maps you have to load
| their JS to display them. Unlike OSM you don't have (legit)
| access to the raw tiles. You would think that base maps would
| be a loss-leader for them but with it's current pricing that
| doesn't seem to be the case. Places API or Directions API are
| even more crazy in pricing that I never even consider using
| them. I'd love to give exact driving/walking distances but
| the cost to do so would be astronomical, instead I just use
| the haversine formula to give "as the crow flies" distances.
|
| I would love to see some of the more complicated Google Maps
| APIs unseated by 3rd party providers (Places/Distance, I
| guess Solar/Pollen/etc too but I care less about those).
| dheera wrote:
| > Unlike OSM you don't have (legit) access to the raw tiles
|
| Google does serve raw tiles, not free of course
|
| https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/maps-
| static...
| joshstrange wrote:
| That's not really "raw tiles" in the OSM or other 3rd
| party map provider sense. Especially since you can't
| save/cache them really (and you can't use them with
| something like leaflet legally)
| dheera wrote:
| Save them to the blockchain then, they can't do anything
| about it.
| dheera wrote:
| > generating revenue by ad placements in 3rd party apps
|
| What worked for websites doesn't work for apps. Have you seen
| apps with ads built into them? They look horrendous. I
| usually uninstall them within 5 seconds of seeing them.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| I think the OP is talking about ads in the sense of showing
| certain places more prominently, not banner ads.
| ddalex wrote:
| [flagged]
| boo-ga-ga wrote:
| When I worked in a startup with location-based apps we also
| were hit by that Google Maps API price increase. However, my
| understanding is that they are still free for use on mobile,
| and maybe that's the place which Google really cares to be at
| any cost? As for the web, they already control all the data
| they want with their to analytics, ads, and Chrome browser.
| pirsquare wrote:
| It used to be cheap and affordable, then one day some Google
| executive decided to 10X the Map APIs pricing.
| Topgamer7 wrote:
| I mean this one I actually get. The price under the hood must
| be immeasurable. They run street cars, buy satellite data,
| have developers, qa, support. All for a product used by most
| for free.
|
| I mean the charging a price for it yes, but expecting
| everyone to be able to pay it is a fantasy.
| notatoad wrote:
| but they also run a first-party maps app. the price of the
| streetview cars, satellite data, development, and qa isn't
| all just for the API.
|
| i'm not really criticizing, they can charge whatever they
| want if they don't want people to use their maps api. and i
| suspect they don't really want people to use their maps API
| - the pricing seems targeted to milk the orgs who can't be
| bothered to implement a cheaper option.
| earthboundkid wrote:
| One place I worked had been using a Google Map, but switched to
| Bing when the price went up. The Bing map had a banner on it
| saying they needed a license key, so they just hid the banner
| with CSS! I came in a few years later and replaced the whole
| thing with Leaflet+Carto, but it was pretty funny code
| archeology to see "Hmm, why is this crazy CSS class here.
| Oh..."
| glonq wrote:
| 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.
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