GT500

A well thought out post but there is a bit of information that is missing. We don't know exactly what the additional cost both for Groundspeak, and for it's patrons would be if they chose to reinstate Google maps as it was before. I've seen some pretty astronomical figures. There have been a few people that said that they'd pay more to get Google maps back, but how much more. If GS increased the PM rate to $35, there may be some that would grumble about the increase but most would probably re-up. If it went up to $40 a month, there may be a few existing customers that might not think it's worth it. Suppose, in order to get Google Maps back it went up to $50 a month or more. Personally, I might choose to drop my PM if it went up that high. We've seen quite a few threats from people that they're not going to renew their membership due to the change in the mapping page. What we don't know is what the impact might be for those considering a premium membership. How many have chosen not to pay for a PM because the mapping page doesn't have a Google maps satellite view option. How many potential PM members would Groundspeak lose if the monthly cost was $50 a month? ...hence the suggestion of making it an elective add-on. GS eats some, raises the base PM cost marginally (which they should've done a long time ago, frankly), and/or put most (or all) of the cost on folks who choose to have access to Google Maps as an elective add-on to their existing PM account (for an additional fee, of course). This not only would reduce the number of people with access (thereby, presumably, lowering the total cost), but also put the majority (if not all) of the cost of it on the people using it. Any one (or combination) of these approaches would be a far better move all around than just eliminating it entirely unnecessarily. --Matt I completely agree. I would double my premium membership to have access to google maps. I spend my entire time searching for backcountry caches where images and terrain is invaluable. The new satelite images are worthless. They never load and if they do they are slow. I miss the old topo and terrain maps. These are tools I would pay to have back. I would suggest either increasing the premium fee or charging a google maps add on fee. --A very dissatisfied customer.