Google Maps

[joefremont]

I am sure some of you have noticed the Google Maps on the site are having issues again. Turns out Google has bumped up the rates for map views last year and after I finally fixed it (by setting up an account with a live credit card) they were costing us quite a bit. Google gives a 'credit' of free usage each month of 200$ but only 28000 map views will use it up and we were going way past that and in September it cost us three times as much as we pay for the server itself. I have tried to do some work to prevent VA's from embedding our map pages into their website but it did not help much. I did put a cap of 1000 daily views but that is getting used in the middle of the day.

Now the period defined by the day is set by Google which is based in California so it starts at midnight california time or 8:00 UTC so if you happen to live in Europe you would probably see the maps fine but those of us in the other side of the pod will often get the 'problem with maps' message. Which I did not think was very fair.

So today, to spread the pain around a bit more fairly, I made a change so that pilots with premium accounts will get to view the maps with the active Google Map Key while those without will not.

I have been looking for an alternative and I may end up using different maps for different pages to try to stay under the free levels on the different services. I will keep you all posted.

[MrJTSZ]

Have your tried Open street maps?

https://www.openstreetmap.org/

[joefremont]

I have looked at open street maps but as far as I can tell they don't have satellite maps. The road maps they have don't seem very useful for looking at airports but they may be useful for the maps for flights, it is an option I am investigating.