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Comment by beering | Hacker News Reader

One thing us hackers should be especially aware of is that it is a violation of the free Google Maps API terms of service to embed Google Maps in anything that makes money.

Read that again. If you make a classifieds website but charge businesses to list, it's a violation of the free Maps API TOS and you need to purchase an Enterprise license. Enterprise licenses start at 5 figures/annum for low-volume usage.

This is not some abstract ideological nitpick. Google has ramped up its attempts to monetize Maps ever since they introduced quotas a couple years back, and they are actively pursuing businesses to force them to buy an Enterprise license. So there is a very real risk that you could be targeted if you embed Google Maps, especially if your website gets big. This is no doubt one reason why companies like Foursquare, Craigslist, etc. use OpenStreetMap rather than Google Maps.

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Hi,

I work on the Google Maps API team. I am not a lawyer, but my reading of the terms does not equate with yours.

Here's the excerpt:

      (a) Free Access (No Fees). Your Maps API Implementation must
      be generally accessible to users without charge and must
      not require a fee-based subscription or other fee-based
      restricted access. This rule applies to Your Content
      and any other content in your Maps API Implementation,
      whether Your Content or the other content is in
      existence now or is added later.

My reading is that in your example, charging businesses to list is okay, but charging users to access the site is not.

https://developers.google.com/maps/terms#section_9_1

You are not a lawyer, sure, but you are also, apparently, not Google's "compliance team". Section 10.1.2 says you can't charge anyone a fee for the "implementation". What is the "implementation" and what isn't? You might have one answer. Someone else in the company might have another. That's typical of big companies, where not everyone may enforce policies different, but still pretty scary for anyone who falls in this gray area.

That's not how I read it. It looks like you can make money just not by charging for maps API. i.e. your maps implementation should be in your free SKU.

"10.1.2 Restrictions against Commercial Use.

(a) No Fees. 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, except as permitted under Section 9.1.2"

https://developers.google.com/maps/terms#section_10_1

Had to make an account and comment - my friend went through this whole thing and the terms of service get pretty fuzzy pretty quickly.

For his listings website that charged business owners fees for "premium" listings, Google[0] considered the embedded Maps to be part of what he was selling. They argued that the service as a whole (incl. maps) was "the product".

We disagree, apparently, but our interpretation doesn't mean diddly squat until push comes to shove.

[0] Edit: by "Google", I mean whatever sales drone is trying to get you to pay. I assume their salespeople are on commission like any other company.

> I assume their salespeople are on commission like any other company.

With one important difference: they're the most arrogant, uninterested and rude sales people i've ever had to deal with. "Because, what are you going to do, use Bing?"

C'mon OSM. Can't get rid of google fast enough.

Huh? This is definitely not true. As long as the map itself is not behind a paywall, you're fine, and charging for being listed in your system (not for visiting it) would pretty much easily pass the terms of service requirement listed above. Lots of people make money on sites with google maps embedded in them. The only thing you have to worry about is being more popular than 25k loads per day.

Do you run their compliance team and call the shots on how that's interpreted?

If so... would like to get in touch - maybe you can help my friend out by putting that sales drone in line.

No, but I have made a site that's not too far away from that, and been around the Maps API forums enough to know that plenty of sites like that exist.

At (http://myheatmap.com) we were sweating whether we were violating Google Maps API terms. So we decided to implement Mapbox and haven't looked back.

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