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Geocaching.com site update Feb 14th, 2012


OpinioNate

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When using my iMac, some os the caches disappear when I zoom in with the new maps. That needs to be corrected soon.

 

When using an iPad, you can no longer click on the geocache icon to see the information about a particular geocache. That is a serious bug because the map has very little value if one can not determine which cache is which.

Edited by fcyoung
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People are making this Google Maps issue far too complicated. A vendor that provides a core service has decided to raise their rates (from $0 to "something more than $0"). The fact is that Groundspeak has profited on that vendor service having been provided for $0 for a number of years. The decision to remove it is 100% motivated by maintaining that profit margin. Make no mistake, this is not "evil Google's" doing; it's Groundspeak's. Statement's by Groundspeak that they had no choice and their "explanation" are pure hogwash.

 

There are 3 legitimate ways of solving this problem (I am treating "remove the service" as an illegitimate option since there is clearly not a viable alternative):

 

1. Pay for it out of existing revenue. This will reduce profits in the short-term, but will maintain the viability of one of the website's core features (which will have the long-term benefit of not driving users elsewhere). It's almost like a capital investment (but not really).

 

2. Pass along the cost to users. I, like many, I would imagine, would gladly pay significantly more on my premium membership to have access to Google Maps.

 

3. Related to #2, reduce user access. If you don't want to (or think it's unfair to) force PMs to subsidize the costs incurred by paying for the required license from Google, you could make it a PMO service. Or, if you're not comfortable raising the rates on all PMs to pay for it, you could make it an "add-on" elective service for PMs who want it.

 

Some combination of all 3 actually makes the most sense. Cash flow and profit would be disrupted significantly at the outset as you'd need to wait for premium memberships to come due before you could raise the rate, but after a year, you'd be in balance with where you want to be.

 

Let's face it. $30 is a steal for a PM as it is, and Groundspeak is too worried about protecting its profit margin here. Everyone's going to need to kick in here, but removing Google Maps altogether and replacing it with a half-baked, half-as-functional, but "free" replacement is a short-sighted and irrational decision.

 

Sure, by the grace of the internet, we haven't had to pay for it yet, but we should've long ago.

 

You get what you pay for.

 

--Matt

 

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?

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The latest update is really terrible. I always use my iPad to plan my Geocaching trip while I'm on the train/public transport. With the latest update I can see the caches, but I am unable to click on them. This means I am currently unable to go geocaching in a planned, structured way, because I often don't have the time to make exact plans on the computer at home on the day before.

 

I also have several vacation trips planned this year, where I need to use the iPad for planning Geocaching tours. Since I don't have a laptop, I rely on the iPad working correctly. The way it currently is, I will be unable to go geocaching in a meaningful way while on vacation. The BETA maps didn't work on the iPad before, but I could always switch back to the old-style maps, which were not great to navigate on a touch interface, but at least worked.

 

Now they are gone and we are left without any working solution at all. :(

 

Please take note that this is a worst-case situation. Please fix this bug as soon as you can. You didn't seem to care about the BETA maps not working, but that was okay. OSM is fine with me, too, because I like that project and can see the benefits, but please bring back some... well, any kind of working map for the iPad and other tablets.

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I say we boycott Geocaching.com, We should all switch to OPENCACHING.com.....and see how they like that....only problrm is they have all the control when it comes to TBS.....NO renewed pm for me....Think I will move on to opencahing and delete all my hides from this site.....lets all get together and boycott Geocaching.com till they bring back are Google maps....

 

Out here in The Real World, that is called "Cutting Off One's Nose to Spite One's Face." One does not change things in any organization from without: only from within. You can destroy something from without (it's called War), and you can facilitate internal change from without (consider Japan in 1946), but you cannot force change from without. It isn't working with Iran or North Korea; it won't work here (and no, I'm not equating Groundspeak with those two countries; I used a rhetorical device to make a point). Effective change is only accomplished by continuing to register complaints and make suggestions, and offering assistance where applicable.

 

That being said, I agree that the mapping situation is ridiculous. Too slow, too awkward, too limited. I suggested raising PM fees by $5 more than three years ago. I suggest a raise of $10 now, to $40 per year; that ought to be more than enough to bring Goggle Maps back. Yes, there will be people who say they cannot afford ten bucks more per year, although I will find that very hard to believe; if you can afford a GPSr and the gas to drive around chasing after little boxes, you can afford the cost of two fast-food meals. The PM fee has been $30 from the start (eight years? I can't remember); I'm sure that many costs have gone up since then. Maybe the sales of all the ancillary stuff has been enough to cover it; if so, that's wonderful. But the fact is that Google Maps has been a VERY VALUABLE asset, and if it needs to be paid for, then let us, the users, pay for it. Give us the option of voting; if more than 50% of those who vote opt to pay an extra ten bucks a year for Google Maps and all the other stuff that we had before, then that's what Groundspeak should do. It's called DEMOCRACY, one of the sweetest words in the English language. Give we, the users, the chance to vote on this.

First off this is not a democracy. It is more of an Oliarachy. Secondly I really don't care what mapping is used. I most definitely do not care to pay more for my premium membership just so you can have Google mapping. There are to many ways to accomplish that with out paying more for it to be served to me from Groundspeak. I vote to leave it as it is.

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How come we have had the main maps removed but the minimap on the cache page is still there!?

The latest update has upset many cachers and myself as well.

I am displeased with the speed the maps are going. Also when I look for caches I use the map to see where I am off to.

Then once I have had a look, I then look at the Ariel maps to see what I have to do.

The Ariel map for New Zealand, shows it at an extremely far distance and there is no detail.

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Actually, it worked fine on our test site on mobile devices. We are trying to track down what we believe is a config issue on the production servers that is preventing proper functioning there.

 

Something tells me your test environment doesn't match your production environment. <_<

Course it doesn't. look at all the changes within the last year and how most of it is mobile centric.

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I agree with the majority of post here that are against the move to the new map service. As a relatively new member I am considering a PM but in the light of what has been said here and the (now) poor maps, I am considering not doing that.

I know that most would argue that I should pay for the service anyway so that (maybe) GC could then afford to go back to Googlemaps, but this new map service is so poor that I think I will wait and see what happens.

I also agree that there has been little comment for GC headquarters as to what is going on.

<_<

 

Gandalfrees

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First off this is not a democracy. It is more of an Oliarachy. Secondly I really don't care what mapping is used. I most definitely do not care to pay more for my premium membership just so you can have Google mapping. There are to many ways to accomplish that with out paying more for it to be served to me from Groundspeak. I vote to leave it as it is.

 

+1 on this....

 

 

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I understand why you switched from goggle maps but I'm not a fan. Since making the move to MapQuest I have noticed all my searches have taken a lot longer. The map is very slow to refresh. The Aerial view takes even longer and most of the time I can't see the complete map. There are large sections which never seem to come up no matter how long I wait and you can't zoom in as far as you could with goggle. This was very helpful on many occasions.

 

I do like that I can see the map on my ipad now. To be more specific I previously couldn't use the beta maps. I had to select the older version maps but at least I could tap on a cache icon and be able to pull up all it's information. With this new version of MapQuest I can't do that. No matter how many times I tap on a cache icon nothing happens. So what's up with that? I use my ipad a lot during and after searching for caches. Many times after successful hunts I go to my local coffee shop and log my finds. Guess I won't be able to do that anymore.

 

Jury is still out on whether or not I will like this new version of maps.

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People are making this Google Maps issue far too complicated. A vendor that provides a core service has decided to raise their rates (from $0 to "something more than $0"). The fact is that Groundspeak has profited on that vendor service having been provided for $0 for a number of years. The decision to remove it is 100% motivated by maintaining that profit margin. Make no mistake, this is not "evil Google's" doing; it's Groundspeak's. Statement's by Groundspeak that they had no choice and their "explanation" are pure hogwash.

 

There are 3 legitimate ways of solving this problem (I am treating "remove the service" as an illegitimate option since there is clearly not a viable alternative):

 

1. Pay for it out of existing revenue. This will reduce profits in the short-term, but will maintain the viability of one of the website's core features (which will have the long-term benefit of not driving users elsewhere). It's almost like a capital investment (but not really).

 

2. Pass along the cost to users. I, like many, I would imagine, would gladly pay significantly more on my premium membership to have access to Google Maps.

 

3. Related to #2, reduce user access. If you don't want to (or think it's unfair to) force PMs to subsidize the costs incurred by paying for the required license from Google, you could make it a PMO service. Or, if you're not comfortable raising the rates on all PMs to pay for it, you could make it an "add-on" elective service for PMs who want it.

 

Some combination of all 3 actually makes the most sense. Cash flow and profit would be disrupted significantly at the outset as you'd need to wait for premium memberships to come due before you could raise the rate, but after a year, you'd be in balance with where you want to be.

 

Let's face it. $30 is a steal for a PM as it is, and Groundspeak is too worried about protecting its profit margin here. Everyone's going to need to kick in here, but removing Google Maps altogether and replacing it with a half-baked, half-as-functional, but "free" replacement is a short-sighted and irrational decision.

 

Sure, by the grace of the internet, we haven't had to pay for it yet, but we should've long ago.

 

You get what you pay for.

 

--Matt

 

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

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Also, why do The people at Geocaching.com not reply to these posts? They should at least acknowledge that there is a problem. Communication is pretty poor.

Actually, Moun10bike has posted quite a bit in the last few days. Go to his profile and click the link to show his recent forum posts.

 

Thanks for the link so I didn't have to dredge through 11 pages. I gave the new maps a few days to work out. I like the road map and can zoom in on that nicely. The Cloud Made and Mapquest Aerial are still completely useless if you try to zoom in. (Im using an iMac with Safari, Firefox and Chrome) To think that Groundspeak would be satisfied with this would be un expectable for me as a customer. The Mapquest satellite images seem to be working fine on their site.

So some sort of server problem is the issue here, correct? Sure Google Maps are great as that is what 90% of us are used to., and use every day for for important things that are not geocaching related. Paying more on the consumers part is not acceptable to me . The price point and valu is completely different to every single person who pays the fee to use the site. I believe that Groundspeak is trying to fix the issue here. Yes it sucks and yes I and im sure thousands more are very disappointed. We pay to play and have the right to complain or switch to another site. There is only one other listing site that has any worth and it is NOT the Garmin .com site thats for sure. IMO

Lets hope they get the issue resolved soon

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People are making this Google Maps issue far too complicated. A vendor that provides a core service has decided to raise their rates (from $0 to "something more than $0"). The fact is that Groundspeak has profited on that vendor service having been provided for $0 for a number of years. The decision to remove it is 100% motivated by maintaining that profit margin. Make no mistake, this is not "evil Google's" doing; it's Groundspeak's. Statement's by Groundspeak that they had no choice and their "explanation" are pure hogwash.

 

There are 3 legitimate ways of solving this problem (I am treating "remove the service" as an illegitimate option since there is clearly not a viable alternative):

 

1. Pay for it out of existing revenue. This will reduce profits in the short-term, but will maintain the viability of one of the website's core features (which will have the long-term benefit of not driving users elsewhere). It's almost like a capital investment (but not really).

 

2. Pass along the cost to users. I, like many, I would imagine, would gladly pay significantly more on my premium membership to have access to Google Maps.

 

3. Related to #2, reduce user access. If you don't want to (or think it's unfair to) force PMs to subsidize the costs incurred by paying for the required license from Google, you could make it a PMO service. Or, if you're not comfortable raising the rates on all PMs to pay for it, you could make it an "add-on" elective service for PMs who want it.

 

Some combination of all 3 actually makes the most sense. Cash flow and profit would be disrupted significantly at the outset as you'd need to wait for premium memberships to come due before you could raise the rate, but after a year, you'd be in balance with where you want to be.

 

Let's face it. $30 is a steal for a PM as it is, and Groundspeak is too worried about protecting its profit margin here. Everyone's going to need to kick in here, but removing Google Maps altogether and replacing it with a half-baked, half-as-functional, but "free" replacement is a short-sighted and irrational decision.

 

Sure, by the grace of the internet, we haven't had to pay for it yet, but we should've long ago.

 

You get what you pay for.

 

--Matt

 

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.

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To contribute to the discussion about paying a bit more to have Google maps ( and have it working properly again too), I would be happy to pay more. Just think how much membership of a gym costs, but this is exercise, fresh air, discovering new places and the thrill of the hunt. People should think of that when saying it would cost too much.

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Old Maps circa 2005...

 

New maps...

 

Hmm, I kind of like the old ones if you ask me... <_<

 

There were no satellite maps in 2005.

there was terraserver back in the 90s. i remember playing with it on win95 :)

i don't remember if there was streetnames and such but the imagery was there.

Yep...it was around for a long time. Fun time!

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Bottom line. Why charge the PM's for something that everyone benifits from? Charge everyone..period!!!

Why charge anyone for something that really is not that important?

Not important to you, maybe, but you can't speak for everybody.

Well I don't care to pay more for something that can be had for free. There are plenty of solutions available to address the issue that do not involve me paying more money. Perhaps you need to look around a bit and you will discover the new maps are a non-issue.

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There is one thing that I am very disappointed in that no one has mentioned. That is how Groundspeak handled this mapping issue. Google announced its intent to charge for high-volume usage months ago giving its users time to adjust. Groundspeak slipped a note into a forum a couple of hours before making its change giving its users no time to adjust.

 

Learn to communicate with your users Groundspeak! You will save everyone, yourself included, a lot of headaches. You finally learned to announce outages with that yellow banner. Expand that idea to other things – like this map change.

 

Example (banner): A significant change is forthcoming. See the following forum thread for addition information and discussion (link).

 

Your feedback will help us adjust to the change and our feedback will help you implement a change with an understanding of the user community’s concerns/wishes.

 

I agree. Groundspeak really dropped the ball on giving users a warning of a pretty big coming change. Having some discussion of this change and possible alternates beforehand might have allowed a better outcome. It would at have at least headed off some of the complaints in this thread.

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People are making this Google Maps issue far too complicated. A vendor that provides a core service has decided to raise their rates (from $0 to "something more than $0"). The fact is that Groundspeak has profited on that vendor service having been provided for $0 for a number of years. The decision to remove it is 100% motivated by maintaining that profit margin. Make no mistake, this is not "evil Google's" doing; it's Groundspeak's. Statement's by Groundspeak that they had no choice and their "explanation" are pure hogwash.

 

There are 3 legitimate ways of solving this problem (I am treating "remove the service" as an illegitimate option since there is clearly not a viable alternative):

 

1. Pay for it out of existing revenue. This will reduce profits in the short-term, but will maintain the viability of one of the website's core features (which will have the long-term benefit of not driving users elsewhere). It's almost like a capital investment (but not really).

 

2. Pass along the cost to users. I, like many, I would imagine, would gladly pay significantly more on my premium membership to have access to Google Maps.

 

3. Related to #2, reduce user access. If you don't want to (or think it's unfair to) force PMs to subsidize the costs incurred by paying for the required license from Google, you could make it a PMO service. Or, if you're not comfortable raising the rates on all PMs to pay for it, you could make it an "add-on" elective service for PMs who want it.

 

Some combination of all 3 actually makes the most sense. Cash flow and profit would be disrupted significantly at the outset as you'd need to wait for premium memberships to come due before you could raise the rate, but after a year, you'd be in balance with where you want to be.

 

Let's face it. $30 is a steal for a PM as it is, and Groundspeak is too worried about protecting its profit margin here. Everyone's going to need to kick in here, but removing Google Maps altogether and replacing it with a half-baked, half-as-functional, but "free" replacement is a short-sighted and irrational decision.

 

Sure, by the grace of the internet, we haven't had to pay for it yet, but we should've long ago.

 

You get what you pay for.

 

--Matt

 

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.

 

As a couple of us have noted here and on the Feature Request forum, it looks like users could be allowed to provide their own (free for <25,000 hits/day) Google Maps API key. This would let people who want Google Maps get them at no cost.

Link to comment

People are making this Google Maps issue far too complicated. A vendor that provides a core service has decided to raise their rates (from $0 to "something more than $0"). The fact is that Groundspeak has profited on that vendor service having been provided for $0 for a number of years. The decision to remove it is 100% motivated by maintaining that profit margin. Make no mistake, this is not "evil Google's" doing; it's Groundspeak's. Statement's by Groundspeak that they had no choice and their "explanation" are pure hogwash.

 

There are 3 legitimate ways of solving this problem (I am treating "remove the service" as an illegitimate option since there is clearly not a viable alternative):

 

1. Pay for it out of existing revenue. This will reduce profits in the short-term, but will maintain the viability of one of the website's core features (which will have the long-term benefit of not driving users elsewhere). It's almost like a capital investment (but not really).

 

2. Pass along the cost to users. I, like many, I would imagine, would gladly pay significantly more on my premium membership to have access to Google Maps.

 

3. Related to #2, reduce user access. If you don't want to (or think it's unfair to) force PMs to subsidize the costs incurred by paying for the required license from Google, you could make it a PMO service. Or, if you're not comfortable raising the rates on all PMs to pay for it, you could make it an "add-on" elective service for PMs who want it.

 

Some combination of all 3 actually makes the most sense. Cash flow and profit would be disrupted significantly at the outset as you'd need to wait for premium memberships to come due before you could raise the rate, but after a year, you'd be in balance with where you want to be.

 

Let's face it. $30 is a steal for a PM as it is, and Groundspeak is too worried about protecting its profit margin here. Everyone's going to need to kick in here, but removing Google Maps altogether and replacing it with a half-baked, half-as-functional, but "free" replacement is a short-sighted and irrational decision.

 

Sure, by the grace of the internet, we haven't had to pay for it yet, but we should've long ago.

 

You get what you pay for.

 

--Matt

 

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.

 

As a couple of us have noted here and on the Feature Request forum, it looks like users could be allowed to provide their own (free for <25,000 hits/day) Google Maps API key. This would let people who want Google Maps get them at no cost.

And if you bother looking around in the Geocaching topics forum you will see a solution is available today.

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Bottom line. Why charge the PM's for something that everyone benifits from? Charge everyone..period!!!

Why charge anyone for something that really is not that important?

Not important to you, maybe, but you can't speak for everybody.

Well I don't care to pay more for something that can be had for free. There are plenty of solutions available to address the issue that do not involve me paying more money. Perhaps you need to look around a bit and you will discover the new maps are a non-issue.

 

Attention Everyone:

 

The change does not bother JHolly, and as such, should not bother the rest of us. Check. Got it. Thanks for your productive contributions to the topic.

 

--Matt

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Bottom line. Why charge the PM's for something that everyone benifits from? Charge everyone..period!!!

Why charge anyone for something that really is not that important?

Not important to you, maybe, but you can't speak for everybody.

Well I don't care to pay more for something that can be had for free. There are plenty of solutions available to address the issue that do not involve me paying more money. Perhaps you need to look around a bit and you will discover the new maps are a non-issue.

 

Attention Everyone:

 

The change does not bother JHolly, and as such, should not bother the rest of us. Check. Got it. Thanks for your productive contributions to the topic.

 

--Matt

 

I did say you should probably look around a bit and there is a viable solution available that does not involve opening the wallet. The solution is available in this thread and another forum. Just look around.

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Bottom line. Why charge the PM's for something that everyone benifits from? Charge everyone..period!!!

Why charge anyone for something that really is not that important?

Not important to you, maybe, but you can't speak for everybody.

Well I don't care to pay more for something that can be had for free. There are plenty of solutions available to address the issue that do not involve me paying more money. Perhaps you need to look around a bit and you will discover the new maps are a non-issue.

 

Attention Everyone:

 

The change does not bother JHolly, and as such, should not bother the rest of us. Check. Got it. Thanks for your productive contributions to the topic.

 

--Matt

 

I did say you should probably look around a bit and there is a viable solution available that does not involve opening the wallet. The solution is available in this thread and another forum. Just look around.

 

Great. I'm happy that you've found a "solution" that works for *you* and the way *you* use the site and/or the browser *you* use. I'm assuming that means you'll stop trolling this thread. You've more than made your point.

 

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=290410&st=150&p=4972708entry4972708

 

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=290410&st=150&p=4972772entry4972772

 

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=290410&st=400&p=4975022entry4975022

 

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=290410&st=400&p=4975186entry4975186

 

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=290410&st=500&p=4976586entry4976586

 

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=290410&st=500&p=4976587entry4976587

 

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=290410&st=500&p=4977163entry4977163

 

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=290410&st=500&p=4977181entry4977181

 

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=290410&st=500&p=4977191entry4977191

 

Thanks!

Edited by Team Van Dyk
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When using my iMac, some os the caches disappear when I zoom in with the new maps. That needs to be corrected soon.

 

When using an iPad, you can no longer click on the geocache icon to see the information about a particular geocache. That is a serious bug because the map has very little value if one can not determine which cache is which.

 

I agree. Pls help us iPad users regain map functionality!

Edited by PDXMadDog
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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.

 

There is a free fix for Chrome and Firefox users. Both work great now with several mapping options :grin: I for one will never pay more than the $30 price point.

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Two thoughts:

First, you can always paste the coordinates into google maps. I know, it is an extra step, but it is do-able.

 

There's a link from the cache listing that shows the cache at the listed coordinates on Google Maps. No cut & paste required. Been there for years.

Edited by BBWolf+3Pigs
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Bottom line. Why charge the PM's for something that everyone benifits from? Charge everyone..period!!!

Why charge anyone for something that really is not that important?

Not important to you, maybe, but you can't speak for everybody.

Well I don't care to pay more for something that can be had for free. There are plenty of solutions available to address the issue that do not involve me paying more money. Perhaps you need to look around a bit and you will discover the new maps are a non-issue.

 

Attention Everyone:

 

The change does not bother JHolly, and as such, should not bother the rest of us. Check. Got it. Thanks for your productive contributions to the topic.

 

--Matt

+2

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Hate it. I couldn't care less about a more detailed OSM Street map when all I use is the satellite view. These new maps are slow and won't refresh correctly. How much more would a Premium Membership cost if it went towards paying for the Google API?

 

Hate the change ... thanks Google.

 

more to the point, what is the premium membership actually paying for at the moment?

all we've had recently is features removed and replaced with inferior solutions.

 

here's an idea, let premium members have access to google maps, and non-premium members can have access to the poor-mans maps.

 

I do wonder about that for a long time. my membership is due soon and right now I feel my 30 bucks is paying for Groudspeak's wonderful benefit plans for their workers and high rent (Seattle) instead of the services I really paying for.

Yup, got a point there judge!

+4

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The Map Quest Aerial maps are useless to me. They only work at such far out resolutions that I can't see anything useful. As I zoom in, map acquisition slows down and appears in patches only and nothing but a blank page shows as I continue to zoom in. I guess it's back to uploading everything to my 60CSX and then downloading to Google Earth to get anything useful. You might as well get rid of the aerial feature if this is the best you can do.

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On the old maps, when you hovered over a cache icon, you saw the NUMBER of the cache, not the name. Is there any way you can add that feature back in? Like maybe BOTH the name and the number? Being able to see the number is a very important feature for me. Thanks.

 

This new map style in general is going to take some getting used to!

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Two thoughts:

First, you can always paste the coordinates into google maps. I know, it is an extra step, but it is do-able.

 

There's a link from the cache listing that shows the cache at the listed coordinates on Google Maps. No cut & paste required. Been there for years.

Absolutely!

 

That post got me wondering though... I wonder how much C:Geo contributes to the extra hits that pushed GC to the level of being unable to afford the Google product anymore. As you pointed out, the single requests for maps work fine, GE viewer seems to within it's limits, there is the GM script and Chrome extension as well. I notice the current (and improving) options, but don't really see any different in MY searching methods when checking out caches. Of course I use a computer at home and my notes in the field. Not paperless yet, but don't think that would matter much. But then I don't have any need to display thousands of caches at a time in the field either. Also wondering if they yelled at the C:Geo Opensource people to fix it up or comply with the API, or just complain to GC. As for the GC app, there are others that even GC acknowledges as better, such as NeonGeo or any of the others on the API suppliers listing.

 

Got to go investigate the Chrome extension, maybe..

 

Doug 7rxc

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Already said - but I'm just venting too!!! The MapQuest Aerial simply does not work and is worthless!!!! You only get half the tiles and if you zoom in you get nothing. Google Earth still is okay though to view by aerial images. Typical Google though - heck their map services have slowed down so much over the past year - they aren't as reliable as they used to be either!

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I wonder how much C:Geo contributes to the extra hits that pushed GC to the level of being unable to afford the Google product anymore.

I don't pretend to know how c:geo gets their data, but I doubt they're using the maps page. I would expect that they're using the individual cache pages, which shouldn't add any Google Map hits to the total. The only hits in question are those of the dynamic maps, which can only come from either the full-fledged maps page, or by clicking the "View Dynamic Map" link on the cache page.

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I wonder how much C:Geo contributes to the extra hits that pushed GC to the level of being unable to afford the Google product anymore.

I don't pretend to know how c:geo gets their data, but I doubt they're using the maps page. I would expect that they're using the individual cache pages, which shouldn't add any Google Map hits to the total. The only hits in question are those of the dynamic maps, which can only come from either the full-fledged maps page, or by clicking the "View Dynamic Map" link on the cache page.

Not sure if they are using the map page or not, but from a few posts it sounds like C:geo is broke big time since the update. Seems if all they were doing is scrapping the cache pages it should still work, unless GS changed the tags on the cache pages. But it sounds like they were getting the Google tiles from Groundspeak.

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New OpenMaps are complete rubbish. As far as maps go, they are among the worst I have seen. They are not user-friendly and lack the detail and appeal of the old Google mapping. The aerial view fails to load on my laptop so is completely useless, and ruins the whole experience. I'm not happy about this, it is a major issue for me, so much so that I will not be renewing my premium membership this year unless it's resolved.

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I wonder how much C:Geo contributes to the extra hits that pushed GC to the level of being unable to afford the Google product anymore.

I don't pretend to know how c:geo gets their data, but I doubt they're using the maps page. I would expect that they're using the individual cache pages, which shouldn't add any Google Map hits to the total. The only hits in question are those of the dynamic maps, which can only come fro.m either the full-fledged maps page, or by clicking the "View Dynamic Map" link on the cache page.

Not sure if they are using the map page or not, but from a few posts it sounds like C:geo is broke big time since the update. Seems if all they were doing is scrapping the cache pages it should still work, unless GS changed the tags on the cache pages. But it sounds like they were getting the Google tiles from Groundspeak.

According to a post on their Facebook page, they were using the old version of Google maps, not the Beta one. I am completely clueless why anyone thinks Groundspeak has any responsibility toward an app that violates it's terms of service.

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Just adding one more voice to the masses of disappointed voices. The maps suck. For Geocaching I want satellite hybrid maps, period.

 

As far as getting mad at Groundspeak/Geocache.com ... I'm not sure how that's going to help. It's better to send your comments to Google instead. Just for your info...

 

"According to the BBC, Google will charge $4 per 1,000 views for "hits" that reach more than 25,000 per day. The new charges will apply to partners who use the Google Maps API service to power their own products."

It looks to me that on this site, the cost would be rather significant, especially when you consider the numbers of non PMs logging in to use the site.

 

In time, it might come back and bite Google in the butt. It would work better for them to incorporate ads into the maps to make revenue, as they certainly have the ability and power to so.

Edited by matokuwapi
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I wonder how much C:Geo contributes to the extra hits that pushed GC to the level of being unable to afford the Google product anymore.

I don't pretend to know how c:geo gets their data, but I doubt they're using the maps page. I would expect that they're using the individual cache pages, which shouldn't add any Google Map hits to the total. The only hits in question are those of the dynamic maps, which can only come from either the full-fledged maps page, or by clicking the "View Dynamic Map" link on the cache page.

 

Thanks for the reply. I was without much information there... however the big feature they offer 'the live maps' would seem to be mostly difficult to do without some sort of dynamic interaction. Perhaps they get the maps directly and only scrape for the cache information? There was something about it once, but they were quoting high volume queries by the program. I seem to remember that GS was unhappy about the frequency of the cache information hits. As well as the means of getting the cache data.

 

Doug 7rxc

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Hello guys, if like my previous post - there's new version of Grease Monkey script that contains also Google terrain map, Google hybrid map and standart Google map is set as default, so you don't have to change it in upper right corner. It also contains czech "Amapy.cz" but I guess you don't care... ;) You can also disable/enable map in selection window.

 

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/125938

 

aaa.png

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