On June 2005 Google opened up Google Maps. Now it is a powerful platform with millions of users per month. That’s why Google start to gather stones (pardon, moneys). So, at the beginning of May, the company announced about Google Maps Platform creation to “encompassing streamlined API products and new industry solutions to help drive innovation”. and the number of changes. What are the updates and how is it influence on the Supsystic? Read in this article.
What are the Google Maps APIs?
What are the Google Maps APIs? The heart and soul of Google Maps are their 18 individual APIs, which are essential for creating location-based apps. To simplify the interaction and working process with them, Google divides them into three groups:
- Maps (dynamic and static)
- Routes (builds the ways from point A to point B)
- Places (helps to find places based on phone number, addresses, and other indicators)
What are the changes?
The first and important update are changes in Pricing Policy: the Standard and Premium plans were merged to “form one pay-as-you go pricing plan”. Moreover, every month the company gives to qualifying SKUs a monthly $200 credit. When you exceed this limit, the additional cost will be charged from your billing account for each call. So, $200 – is it a lot or few? According to Google, the vast majority of their users makes queries within this free plan. There is a full pricing table below, also, you can visit this page. 
When these updates come into force, what I need to do?
These new changes came into force on July 16. Beginning this date, every user needs to have:
- A valid API key
- Google Cloud platform billing account.
All planes are scaled automatically, and work with your existing code, so, there are no changes required. You can use a special Transition tool to check all information related to your account or Guide for existing users.
How did Supsystic react to the changes?
Every month Supsystic makes thousands queries to Google Maps servers, using different SKUs:
- Dynamic maps
- Statics maps
- Directions
Therefore, at the beginning of July, we received from Google $4 500 credits. Do you think it is too much? Actually, no. Because at the end of the month we opened our mailbox in an in good humor, and what we saw there … 
There was a $10500 bill (+ $5500 for the mistake using the old version map with API key) from Google! We think, that Tom Cruise is the best to convey our misunderstanding. Of course, we paid it but learned an important lesson: always read Google mails, even if you do not want, even if you are busy, find for it a few seconds. It will help you to avoid such surprises.
And the last words…
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