[phirschybar]

Our experience with the Google cost increase was similar. We were paying around $550/mo for the GMaps Platform pre-price-change. Over 80% of this cost was for dynamic maps usage. The rest was for use of the Google Places API.

When I got the notification in May that the rates were increasing, I didn't take it that seriously. We have a profitable company and I would have been more than happy to pay Google twice their rate for the premium services they offer. Nobody ever expects a sudden rate increase to be more than 20%, 30% or 40%, right???!

It was in July that the gravity of the situation hit me. I was seeing tweets and articles lamenting the rate increase. I thought to myself "huh, I better check this out". I did some quick math using the new rate card and nearly had a heart attack! Our bill was estimated to be ~$14,500 and the CLOCK WAS TICKING. We were facing a 2600% rate increase and had only 2 months to figure out a game plan. Our business was on the line!

I immediately determined that we were eligible for bulk pricing. However, Google will not sell you the bulk rates directly. You have to contract with an authorized 3rd party (re-seller, basically) to get the rates. So, we found a reseller and locked in the bulk rates. That brought our estimate down to around $12,000/mo. Better, but still a huge shock.

The next step was optimization. There was no way for us to reduce dynamic maps usage because it is such a core part of our products. So, we cut off almost all of our Places API usage and started using other services. Our estimated bill was now down to $9,000.

That's where we are today. We just got our first full month bill. It was a huge hit to our business, wiping out a significant portion of our profitability.

To be frank, I am pissed about this. I was more than happy to pay Google far more than they were charging us. We were always under the impression that rates would increase one day. But, to force an increase of this magnitude with such a short amount of lead time is pretty f&^%ing sh*&$tty coming from a billion dollar giant.

We're starting to test other mapping services. I met with a team member from Mapbox last week and am planning on testing their platform in December. Their quote for our usage needs? $550/mo.

[bad_user]

Going from $550 to $14,500 per month is totally unacceptable.

This is exactly why I'll always be wary to depend on Google's services. And it isn't the first time they do this either.

First they monopolize the market via cheap rates and branding, then they make it exorbitantly expensive.

[xfitm3]

Amazon isn’t too far behind with that model.

[gamblor956]

What are you referring to? Amazon's been pretty good about reducing the cost of AWS features over time.

[tdb7893]

GCP also reduces costs as far as I know. The difference is that the cloud market has more competition

[xfitm3]

I'm referring to Amazon retail.

[cauldron]

That business plan sounds like any other low profit, or unprofitble, free IT product company's.

[magduf]

>Going from $550 to $14,500 per month is totally unacceptable.

Wrong. It's completely acceptable. It's their business, and this is the risk you take when you make your business dependent on another business.

>This is exactly why I'll always be wary to depend on Google's services. And it isn't the first time they do this either. >First they monopolize the market via cheap rates and branding, then they make it exorbitantly expensive.

Google isn't the only company that does stuff like this. Almost any company would do this if they had the opportunity.

[abandonliberty]

This doesn't make it acceptable. It sounds like what you're proposing is that a company must build its own streets, electrical grid, telecom network, generation plants, etc.

Very few business would do well in such an environment.

[magduf]

Also, I'll add that your comparison is apples-to-oranges. For the electrical part in particular, electric utilities in almost every country are highly regulated. They can't raise prices on a whim, even though they're monopolies; the government won't allow it. This doesn't apply to Google Maps. You're comparing services that are provided by a government, or are highly regulated, to a service that has governmental constraints whatsoever. If you don't like the price, don't buy it.

[magduf]

You need to define "acceptable". I see this a lot: someone makes a bold statement saying "xyz isn't acceptable!!!" Why not? Who are they to make that pronouncement? And how exactly are they going to enforce this thing not being acceptable?

If Google raising prices obscenely "isn't acceptable", then what are YOU going to do about it? Nothing, right? Is Google going to change their ways because a few people proclaim "this isn't acceptable!"? No. Therefore, it IS acceptable.

I'm waiting to be proven wrong.... which will only happen if this price-raising is canceled, which I don't think it will be.

[Rescis]

No, he's saying that the business must weigh the cost of backups with the risk of needing them and determine if it is necesarry to fund creation of said backups.

[phirschybar]

maybe intolerable is a better word.

[Moru]

We had a similar experience. The first notices from google said we would be below the free tier so no problems. Turns out we passed the free tier the first hours of the first day of the month. Needless to say we are moving away from all google services we have used, either setting up dedicated servers or paying some other company for the service. In the case of the maps it's much cheaper to pay for a dedicated server with 1 GBps bandwidth than to continue with google maps. And we can update the maps ourselves if something isn't up to date. So the openstreetmaps organisation might be happy at least :-)

[lukeqsee]

Stadia Maps founder here.

We'd be happy to discuss how we can meet your needs, as well, if you're interested. Feel free to reach-out directly: [e-mail].