As of July 16th 2018, Google’s big changes to the pricing for their Map, Route and Place related API services came into effect.
According to their website:
‘Pricing for our core products is pay as you go and you only pay for what you use. You also get a recurring $200 credit on your billing account each month to offset your usage costs, and you can set usage limits to protect against unexpected cost increases…’
Cost
Smaller users — there is no significant change as usage would not exceed the allowance of the $200 monthly credit.
Larger users—massive cost increases as the $200 credit will quickly be used up and everything over will be billed to your credit card.
Notice Period
Way too short. Two and a half months is insufficient time to be able to decide on suitable alternatives, negotiate new contracts, complete development, testing, fixing before moving to production. It has effectively forced large users to pay these new rates at least for the handful of months until an alternative has been scrambled together.
Cost Comparison
When comparing the new pricing with the previous pricing it’s important to compare like for like. This has not been made easy as the two calculators are quite different and, in general, their pricing is very difficult to understand and rather than using Google’s pricing calculator, I suspect most users will resort to watching their credit card charges to learn what their costs are.
To give an idea of the price changes I have calculated costs for a Google customer looking up 1,000 addresses per day. This would loosely equate to a ‘large’ business.
Old Price — (Google Places API) = $0 / month (USD)
New Pricing—Autocomplete Sessions (with Places Details)= $510 (USD)/month 1,000 Autocomplete Sessions/day = 30,000 sessions per month. Total Cost = $510 (USD)/month.
Google API Key
Other than the pricing changes, the one thing that smaller users need to be aware of is the requirements of now having a proper Google API Key. In the past you have been able to make use of the Google services without this key but now you run into errors if operating without one. If you are using AddressFinder in conjunction with Google Maps I suggest you check your website to make sure your not seeing something like this…
 _Error message displayed by Google when not using a proper API key.
Conclusion
Google’s pricing changes have caused a good deal of hassle for large customers making use of their services. This hassle was compounded by insufficient notice being provided. Users did not have enough time to find suitable alternatives.
The good news is that it allows local providers of similar services to attract these users over to their service.
The bad news is that as these services are neither free nor easily accessible. Someone will have to pay for it and at the end of the day, this will likely be you and I.
