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I mean when it comes to interactive maps you have to load their JS to display them. Unlike OSM you don't have (legit) access to the raw tiles. You would think that base maps would be a loss-leader for them but with it's current pricing that doesn't seem to be the case. Places API or Directions API are even more crazy in pricing that I never even consider using them. I'd love to give exact driving/walking distances but the cost to do so would be astronomical, instead I just use the haversine formula to give "as the crow flies" distances.

I would love to see some of the more complicated Google Maps APIs unseated by 3rd party providers (Places/Distance, I guess Solar/Pollen/etc too but I care less about those).



> Unlike OSM you don't have (legit) access to the raw tiles

Google does serve raw tiles, not free of course

https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/maps-static...


That’s not really “raw tiles” in the OSM or other 3rd party map provider sense. Especially since you can’t save/cache them really (and you can’t use them with something like leaflet legally)


Save them to the blockchain then, they can't do anything about it.




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