Google Geo Developers Blog

> Sounds awesome if you can get a trip planner working in JS

It was really a horrible hack that took into account only lines and stops (no trip times, transfer times, schedule, etc.) but as a simple visual app, and in the context of a hackathon, it worked.

It was even featured as "Google Map of the week" on the Google Geo blog before it was even showed to RATP

http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.fr/2013/08/interactive-map-of-paris-metro.html

But now we need to "muscle up" the routing part and so are leaving JS completely (however if the data can be reduced significantly it would be interesting to go back to it someday).

OTP is much too big to ever migrate on a mobile device; will definitely check out rrrr; what do you use yourself?

Anyone remember how Google toyed with the pricing on its Maps API?

In October 2011, Google upped its Maps API pricing to $4+ for 1,000 map loads [1]. Developers rebelled and switched over to OpenStreet Map [2]. Eight months later, Google dropped the price to $0.50 for 1,000 map loads [3].

[1] http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.com/2011/10/introduction-of-usage-limits-to-maps.html

[2] http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/09/google-maps-api-vs-openstreetmap/

[3] http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/22/google-maps-api-gets-massive-price-cut-in-the-wake-of-developer-defections/

What's to say the GCE pricing won't also yo-yo like this?

Mapping is a growing part of the iOS SDK, I can understand Apple not wanting to be dependent on Google for that, particularly after Google started demanding significantly increased fees for Google Maps API usage:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/technology/many-sites-chart-a-new-course-as-google-expands-fees.html

Google walked back some of the worst effects of the changes:

http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.ca/2012/06/lower-pricing-and-simplified-limits.html

but by then the damage had been done in terms of Apple's (and developers') perception of the Google API.

Will you eventually have to pay for usage of Google Maps (http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.com/2011/10/introduction-of-usage-limits-to-maps.html) if you go over 25000 views per day?

I'm asking because I'm cooking up a similar concept, and the upcoming price increase of Google Maps makes me a bit hesitant to use them.

The Google Maps Premier page, where my only option is to "Contact Sales" also doesn't seem very friendly to small sites and apps (http://www.google.com/enterprise/earthmaps/maps.html).

The Google Maps API lets you style maps too [1]. You can change colors and show/hide different map features. There's also a wizard [2] to make styling easier. You can get some very interesting effects [3].

[1] http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.com/2010/05/add-touch-of-style-to-your-maps.html

[2] http://gmaps-samples-v3.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/styledmaps/wizard/index.html

[3] http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.com/2010/10/five-great-styled-maps-examples.html