Can't agree more with your post, cedric. A very sad decision from Google, and a hard lesson to anyone who invest in a technology for actually building software in the long term. My company develops a product with Flex, and its core feature comes with the incredible great integration we can have with Google Maps, through the Flash API. Now we're stuck, we can not switch to a JavaScript version, and we have to find a solution or leave the field. A lot of customers end prospects were very interested in this integration; we put significant effort in it. Now it's a dead-end road.
I can't believe all of the arguments Google gave us to justify the deprecation: - "lack of resources": nonsense, since, as Cedric said, the maintenance of the API will pay itself as soon as they charge a little more, or if Google changes the pricing of Premier users. The flash API does not have to follow exactly the roadmap of the JavaScript version. - "not enough page views": this could be the case for desktop and traditionnal browsers; what about mobiles and tablets? Technologies for those platform are still evolving, and the market will explode in the future years. Flex/AIR have great potential with their cross- platform strategy. Thanks to the Flash API, Flex/AIR could easily add mapping features. Why not wait a few years and see if the API will gain traction in the mobile world? - Google seems to worry only about sites and app that reach millions of people. But what about the enterprise world? I read everywhere that Google wants its technologies to reach the enterprises; but then they kill the API with a technology (Flex/AIR) that is rapidly gaining traction in the enterprise world. An again, the API will pay for itself, as enterprise costumers are Premier costumers. Google dose not realise that the 'Flash API' becomes also the 'Flex/ AIR API'. And that those technologies can bring significant business from the enterprise world, who are paying costumers. I don' 'expect Google to answer me about all their strategy, but I urge them (Thor, please) to answer this one: do you plan to cut the access to the existing Flash API, and if yes, when will you do that? ashil On 7 sep, 23:14, "cedric.nicolas" <[email protected]> wrote: > Fully agree with you all. This decision, and in addition Google refusing to > put source code of Maps API is deeply sad. My company has developed a full > Flex/AIR standalone application based on GMap, hundreds man.years of > developement invested and hundreds of thousands lines of code. It is simply > not portable to Javascript as it is AIR application and not Web at all, for > several performance and security reasons. > In addition we yearly pay x0000$ (I don't gave the exact amount, my message > might be trashed.. ?) as Premier customer, just because we also have a small > Web application using your maps on our customer's Intranet. And now we learn > that you deprecate this API which is a core component of our business.. > Moving to another API will cost us a lot. > > I personally think that Flash API is a problem for Google, as their > classical business model of ads links into web apps cannot be easily handled > with this API. Javascript is Web based only... no problem to sell ads on > those apps. > > Google, It would be interesting to know your own estimations of Maps Flash > API developers population. At least we can imagine having 2000 because this > is this group members count. But in my company we have 4 people that knows > very well this API, and they are not subscribed to this group. So it might > much more than you expect. And if your decision was based on pages viewed > from Flash, I hope you have taken in account that a Flash Application is not > necessarily online, but might be used by few B2B users with much more value > than a online web user viewing a Javascript GMaps page. > > Now, just a suggestion, Google, if you get an monthly subscription of 10$ > for each developper, this will gives 20000$ a month to keep this API alive. > Why didn't you suggest this to this group ? And a charged access much lower > than Premier cost could also help you to release a bit some access > restrictions to maps, making those investiments profitable as well. > > More important question : if you intend to support this API for 3 years, how > much years do you ensure us that the back-end required to run this Flash API > will survive ? Is there a chance that one day you clearly cut the Flash > access to your maps ? > > Cédric -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Maps API For Flash" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-maps-api-for-flash?hl=en.
