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Comment by chrisbroadfoot | Hacker News Reader

It's possible to use the free API on a commercial site.

I was just going by the "Do I need to use Google Maps API for Business?" in the FAQ here :http://www.google.com/enterprise/earthmaps/maps-faq.html .

"If you are charging a fee for access to your Maps solution, whether for a business or consumer audience, you are required to purchase the Maps API Premier."

To me this reads as, any SAAS web app which used a Google map anywhere would be required to pay $10,000 per year plus usage charges.

https://developers.google.com/maps/terms 10.1.2(a): "You must not charge users or any other third party any fee for the use of the Maps API Implementation, the Service, or the Content ... "

You can use it on a commercial site, but the maps implementation must be available to free users. It limits your options but there are plenty of sites that are commercial ventures and work within these limitations.

I don't think that this is actually anything new. I recall similar language when I looked at their maps licensing terms ~four years ago.

When I dug deeper, it appeared, at the time, that this only applied to features of the app that required payment. So, we were free to offer maps features on our site as part of our free offering. We could still have premium features without paying for a premier license, so long as those premium features didn't rely on Google maps.

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