[aprssig] Google Maps API Change Has "Broken" findu.com

[Steve Dimse]

> On Aug 21, 2018, at 11:44 PM, Stephen H. Smith via aprssig <aprssig at lists.tapr.org> wrote:
> 
> About a week or so ago, Google changed the API (Applications Programming Interface) by which third-party sites (like findu.com") call up Google Maps displays.  findu now produces a dimmed-out overlay on the map overlaid with text "For development purposes only". Additionally, a white box with the message "This page can't load Google Maps correctly" appears.

Sad times from the world of corporate greed.

This was discussed about a month ago on the SIG. It is not a new API, it is new and very expensive billing of maps by Google. It is scary, because you have to give Google a credit card and allow them to bill whatever they say you use. I turned off all my non-amateur projects, which was a considerable amount of traffic, to give all the map loads I can to the ham and weather users. They do have some map quotas you are allowed to set (but not a dollar quota), I have set them so no one IP can get more than one map every 100 seconds, and set the daily quota to one that will cost me the prior month Adsense proceeds plus one twelfth of the money I had saved from prior donations towards a new server. That generally rejects about 2/3 of the daily requests - the multiples throughout the day and then sometime around 6-8 PM eastern all of the requests until the next Google day - midnight PST, 3AM eastern. If I could I would change the daily rollover time, but that is not an option.

Short of hitting the lotto, it is the best I can do. It means in one year findU will be out of money, and probably gone (because I'm covering the hosting fee now (for one server, the other is a free site donated by a ham)), but at the very least findU will be mapless (well, technically google gives you $200/month free, which will cover about 3 hours of maps a day). I'm retired and cannot sink more into it, either in time or money. But maybe I'll hit the lotto...

If you want more maps, click on google ads or donate, all of that money is now going back to google when I set the quota for the following month. And don't use findU if you don't need it (never thought I'd say that!)

Steve K4HG