Google Announces Plans To Charge For Google Maps Access

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There’s a very definite element of good news / bad news to the headline you just read. The bad news is that Google has indeed recently announced a plan to start charging for access to Google Maps, possibly as part of a variety of changes they’ve recently made. But the good news is that you personally will likely never notice or feel the impact of said charge thanks to the way it’s structured.

See, starting bright and promptly on New Years’ Day 2012, Google will be charging $4 for every 1000 views on Google Maps…after it’s accessed from the same IP more that 25,000 times in the same 24 hour period. That’s right, in order to get hit with that charge you’re going to have to access Google Maps at least 26,000 times a day. Some of you are likely doing the math and seeing that breaks down to somewhere around every three seconds. Unless you’re planning a whole lot of vacations that day, well, you’re not really seeing much of a problem here, and with good reason: the charge is geared toward developers and websites that use the Google Maps API service. In fact, Google projects that the charge will only impact somewhere around .35 percent of its users.

Google put the charge in play in a bid to “ensure its long-term future”, by making sure that, even under heavy traffic, the service would still remain usable, which hopefully means that they’ll be taking those charges and putting them toward new servers and the like.  But considering the law of unintended consequences, I find myself wondering if the impact might not be farther reaching than Google thinks. Another expense to developers may mean fewer apps available, and another expense to web sites may result in charges coming from the sites’ owners to their users. But being as this charge hasn’t actually taken effect yet, there’s no way to tell just what kind of impact it may have that goes beyond the expected.

So what do you guys think here? Think you’ll ever notice a charge from Google Maps? Or will this be wider-reaching than Google envisions? Either way, we want to hear from you, so head on down to the comments section and tell us what you think!