[LTER-im] Google Maps API to require credit card?

[Elizabeth Dobbins]

This is very distressing.  I've contacted Google to see what my options are.

Liz

On Wed, May 2, 2018 at 2:13 PM, Wade Sheldon <sheldon at uga.edu> wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> For those (probably most) of you employing Google Maps for your websites,
> I just received notice that the services are being consolidated under a
> "Google Maps Platform" and all use of the JavaScript API will require an
> API key linked to a credit card and billing account, which is a non-starter
> for us and I suspect most other institutions. There's $200 of free use and
> tools to set quotas to avoid going over, but we simply can't deal with CC
> billing at UGA for something like this.
>
> Here's the gist:
>
> "We would like to highlight a few updates that may impact your
> implementation. Beginning June 11th, we are launching our new pricing plan
> and providing all users access to support. We’ll continue to offer a free
> tier — all developers will receive $200 of free monthly usage of our core
> products.
>
> *In addition, this change will require you to enable billing and associate
> it with all of your Google Maps Platform projects.* Creating a billing
> account helps us better understand your usage so we can continue developing
> helpful products. It also allows you to scale easily with less downtime and
> fewer performance issues if your product grows beyond the $200 of free
> monthly usage. For additional visibility and control you can set daily
> quotas or billing alerts."
>
> The guide for existing users (https://cloud.google.com/maps
> -platform/user-guide/) indicates they are supposedly "expanding support
> for non-profits" so there are potentially work-arounds, at least at the
> institutional level, but not a hassle we really need just to keep our stuff
> running.
>
> More of the high cost of using free stuff I guess.
>
> Anyway, let us know if anyone hears anything different on this topic, or
> finds a work-around, and we'll be researching the non-profit angle this
> month.
>
> Sigh....
>
> Wade Sheldon
> GCE-LTER
>
>
>
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>
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