I came so close to getting our app off of Google Maps a few months ago, we'd be saving literally thousands a month. But the "look" of the map from open street map, map tiler, etc was deemed too different and the team was scared it would negatively impact our users. The Maps API is definitely getting worse, and the pricing setup seems like it was cooked up by someone from Microsoft. Also Maplibre and its various wrappers are so much nicer to work it.
Usually the 'look' is not the issue as much as the geocoder (which you are only allowed to use with a google basemap, no that clever idea you have isn't going to work), like clients are often excited to use a more customizable basemap but balk when it comes to other geocoders which are nice but are not the google one which people really really are used to.
I find that the OpenFreeMap[1] 'Liberty' style looks fairly close to Google Maps.<p>1: <a href="https://openfreemap.org/" rel="nofollow">https://openfreemap.org/</a>
I feel like with custom vector based styles, you should be able to get pretty dang close to cloning the look of it? Also subjectively, I find the protomaps basemap themes to be much nicer.
Would it be possible to run an AB test?
I've been following Alex Wellerstein off and on for a few years now, since I discovered that he was a science adviser for a crazed nuclear-history TV series called Manh(a)ttan, so I read this post about NUKEMAP when it originally appeared. I wonder whether the situation with Google Maps is any different now. I'm not a developer, so I don't need to know. I'm just curious.
> I wonder whether the situation with Google Maps is any different now. I'm not a developer, so I don't need to know. I'm just curious.<p>As the Google Maps APIs/libraries already exited the "growth" phase where the focus is acquiring new users, and entered the "squeeze" phase, I'd say it's worse today than it was in 2019.
That map pricing change stole literally months of my life having to rip out google from an app I spend months building it into. F Google
Google Maps is just Spam spelled backwards.
Since then, Open Street Maps is self-hostable and supports all of these calls you'd need to remake this.<p>And no throwing $1500/month at google for what amounts to 3 colored circles on a map.
OpenStreetMap. No "s", no spaces. Happy hacking! :)<p><a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.openstreetmap.org/</a><p><a href="https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OpenMapTiles" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OpenMapTiles</a><p>There are various ways to implement a self-hosted OpenStreetMap. Here's one: <a href="https://blog.netmanageit.com/openstreetmap-server-self-hosted-setup-guide-howto/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.netmanageit.com/openstreetmap-server-self-hoste...</a>
*OpenStreetMap.<p>Seems today the best solution is to self-host Protomaps which offer very fresh OSM extracts, and if HTTP range requests are on the table, single-file hosting of the whole world map.
Wait until someone writes a script doing a loop or auto-refresh and you get charged 100'000 USD. For such, Google is very dangerous (lot of nightmare stories), you have to avoid as much as possible their public API services.