1. Try to do it yourself or find another service, which will usually result in much higher cost and a worse implementation, or
2. Use the Google API, with the cost of lock-in.
I think the best solution is to always wrap the Google API with a generic facade, so if you do have to replace the API with something down the line it is at least possible. There are some APIs out there that already do this (e.g. http://mapstraction.com/ )
Well, as long as people do #2, no competitors can do #1.
The best option would be for Google to get no business anymore, and for people to rely on, preferably open, competitors.
Google’s business isn’t built upon providing data.
Almost everything Google does is forcing people to enter data for them, or scraping other people’s data, and then using that for profit.
From ReCaptcha to MapMaker, from the Knowledge Graph to their new imache captchas.
(IMHO, user-generated data like training data for neural networks, OCR data, or geodata, should be illegal to use for profit under proprietary licenses, with no opt-out. If you want to use data generated by users, you should have to provide it under a copyleft license. For free. Otherwise we have another Antitrust situation, like here.)
The idea is that any user supplied data has to be separated into two groups: Privacy relevant information, which has to be stored encrypted, and can not be used for advertising, for training models, etc – like communications, private messages, email, etc.
And into user-supplied not-privacy-relevant data. The results of users filling out captchas, classifying info for training of neural networks, the data from Google’s MapMaker, etc.
In the case where these two sets of data overlap, privacy is more important, but on request, the company has to hand out every data you ever gave them in a machine-readable format. So if you decide to leave facebook, they have to give you a .zip with your photos, your posts as xml, etc.
The problem is there is a lot of gray area. In fact I think there is probably more utility in spelling out the cases where privacy is not a concern. Captcha is a good, specific example. However releasing that training data would break the system for everyone. What are some others? Is Google takeout up to par with what you're suggesting?
Google takeout is not nearly good enough, but an acceptable first step.
For captcha, the system has been broken for a long time. Specifically, you can outsource captcha solving to people in third world countries for tenthousands of captchas per dollar.
There is a good reason why everyone here on HN considers any startup that might potentially compete with Google dead in the water – or, when Google starts a product, any companies that operated in that business previously are seen as dead.
Google uses predatory pricing (financed by having all parts of their company make losses except for a select few), Google uses their market might in one business to create a monopoly in others, like every time you searched with Firefox you used to get a banner ad "upgrade now to chrome". The cases where Google was literally scraping content from competitors and displayed it without a link back – the current Antitrust trial with Yelp!, where Google scraped reviews, and displayed them in Google places comes to mind. (And when Yelp! complained, Google threatened to throw them out of the results)
And yes, Google’s Maps API is another such situation. Maps is installed by default on all Android devices, giving it a huge boost for apps embedding it. Google Maps is making losses everywhere, breaking laws (see StreetView) and is still running.
At this point everyone still using Maps should switch to competitors, because otherwise we’ll get a situation where Maps becomes again a monopoly.
Google’s long-term strategy seems to be "get a monopoly for everything".
Every monopoly is an Antitrust situation, and Maps is steering right into one.
> There is a good reason why everyone here on HN considers any startup that might potentially compete with Google dead in the water
It is good that you have asked EVERYONE in HN and you KNOW as a fact that everyone thinks the same you think
> Google uses predatory pricing
So you can link to any ruling stating that Google uses predatory pricinc, thing that it is ilegal. Because you can prove it and it is not just your subjective opinion
> the current Antitrust trial with Yelp!, where Google scraped reviews, and displayed them in Google places comes to mind. (And when Yelp! complained, Google threatened to throw them out of the results
I guess you haven’t followed the news? the current EU antitrust trial against Google, which was started after dozens of US companies had complained about Google’s abuse of monopoly.
It's all well and good to say "never use a Google API again because they might eliminate for any reason at any time" but there might not be an alternative. It's hard to get the data. Concentration of data is made concentration of wealth through APIs (or, slightly more indirectly, through the apps that use the APIs, perhaps internally). No-one concentrates data more thoroughly than Google (it's hard to appreciate how much data Google has; it started with scraping the web, but now they have real-time data on millions of sites through analytics, pictures of streets, WiFi ssid against lat/lon, and of course detailed video-viewing habits).
The short-term consumer cycle is feeding a long-term data cycle that strongly favors consolidation. That's bad. Personally I think it's okay to "feed the beast" for a little while, but as soon as you get uptake and can afford the time you can and should stop feeding the beast.
Depends. If they are the only providers, you might want to avoid it. Take OSM - you could use the API with leaflet and their server, but if they can no longer afford the hosting costs and close the service, you could download a copy of the database yourself, and host your own copy.
As a rule of thumb, try to use something standardized, with more than one implementations.
Well, that might be true. But if you base your whole project around somebodies service, and they change the ToS, or shut it down, what right do you have to complain? On the other hand, if you use GMaps only on the contact page - no big harm done. It's all about trade-offs.
The conservatives might want to contribute a little to a FOSS alternative, that might be of lower quality - and benefit all as a result. And cover all their bases as well.
HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2592399