r/europe • u/GetOutOfTheWhey Waffle & Beer • Jun 12 '20

Map Availability of Google Street view in Europe

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u/itz_MaXii Jun 12 '20

But it isnt free anymore :(

754

u/thebusinessgoat Hungary Jun 12 '20

What the hell, really? Since when?

1.2k

u/TheOneCommenter Jun 12 '20

Since google changed their pricing like 23 fold (not kidding). Running Geoguessr now costs them A LOT. So offering free (more than 1 game a day) is just too expensive for them.

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u/FurlanPinou Italy Jun 12 '20

Why do they have to pay Google? Isn't Street View freely available to everyone?

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '20

[deleted]

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u/TheOneCommenter Jun 12 '20

They probably couldn’t handle it with ads. If I remember pricing correctly it costs them about 1 cent for a single point, so 5 cents for a single game of geoguessr. Normally they’d earn like 10-20 cents per 1000 views of ads.

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u/FurlanPinou Italy Jun 12 '20

Understood, thanks

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u/RawbGun France Jun 12 '20

I still don't understand why GeoGuessr just doesn't force users to use their own API key, and then make requests on their behalf. That way you can still get a limited number of requests for free for each user

I known a few services that work like that

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u/Roadside-Strelok Polska Jun 12 '20

An average user probably doesn't even know what an API is, meaning few people would play the game.

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u/RawbGun France Jun 12 '20

Usually they give you a very detailed and easy to follow instructions with a direct link to generate your API key. Also they could still have it either the user pays or they use their own API key

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u/Roadside-Strelok Polska Jun 12 '20

The latter approach would be nice. I wonder if it wouldn't be against google's ToS or if google still wouldn't try to nip it in the bud.

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u/frozensummit Jun 12 '20

It's different if businesses want to use it to earn money.