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Google Maps Engine deprecated

January 26, 2015

Last week Google sent an email to users of Google Maps Engine notifying them that support for the Google Maps Engine product will end on January 29th, 2016 at which point the product will be deactivated.

The email states:

As an organization, we want to focus our efforts on delivering rich location content via our APIs, and enabling customers to take advantage of the capabilities provided by our Google Cloud Platform products.”

The move should be seen as Google transitioning customers to already existing alternative products, especially Google My Maps (formerly Maps Engine Lite) which has come of age and now has most of the important features of Google Maps Engine. Google goes on to suggest alternatives:

Google has scoped some alternative solutions for some common GME use cases. Please find the following resources on solutions for some particular use cases below (additional options will be added as they are scoped):

  • Create a map using Google My Maps
  • Building spatial applications with Google Cloud SQL and Google Maps API
  • Serving raster layers on Google Cloud Platform
  • Building a store locator with the Google Maps API and Cloud SQL”

Here at GEB we have not used Google Maps Engine extensively and would love to hear from our readers which features are not yet available in alternative products that will be missed.

About Timothy Whitehead

Timothy has been using Google Earth since 2004 when it was still called Keyhole before it was renamed Google Earth in 2005 and has been a huge fan ever since. He is a programmer working for Red Wing Aerobatx and lives in Cape Town, South Africa.

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Filed Under: Site News Tagged With: google maps engine

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PLEASE NOTE: Google Earth Blog is no longer writing regular posts. As a result, we are not accepting new comments or questions about Google Earth. If you have a question, use the official Google Earth and Maps Forums or the Google Earth Community Forums.

Comments

  1. chuck dudley says

    January 26, 2015 at 6:48 am

    Hope this is not the beginning of the end for Earth. I and I know others depend upon Earth for my Community Fire Watch Groups on Facebook during Fire Season here on the West Coast. I know ESRI is being pushed but it is not as great as Earth and needs a lot of work to make it as user friendly as Earth in this use I mentioned above. Thank you for all of your hard work keeping us informed.

    • Sean says

      January 27, 2015 at 11:00 am

      It’s not a very reliable application in the first place, so no great loss.

      • chuck dudley says

        January 27, 2015 at 3:08 pm

        I looked hard at ESRI and the other app that is with it but for my needs of on the move Fire Watch reporting they just could not be manipulated enough or actually save things as Earth does. I have each Fire perimeter from past years over 1k acres saved so I can pull them up and compare to new Fire Perimeter Data. Helps in educating others on the fly and the built in screen shot utility.

  2. Carole says

    January 26, 2015 at 3:05 pm

    Oh no. I use Google Maps for my investigative work.

    • Timothy Whitehead says

      January 26, 2015 at 4:59 pm

      Google Maps is not going anywhere and will continue to get better with time. It is a product called ‘Google Maps Engine’ that allowed users to create their own maps or maps based apps that has been deprecated. Alternatives such as those mentioned in the article exist.

  3. Javier says

    January 26, 2015 at 6:30 pm

    We have been working on a replacement for Google Maps Engine for some time now. You can find a comparison with CartoDB. Our goal is to make the transition from Google Maps Engine to CartoDB in hours, and still keep using your Google Maps API Key.

    Read more about it here:

    http://blog.cartodb.com/gme-to-cartodb/

  4. janiniyah says

    January 26, 2015 at 7:31 pm

    your sooooooooooooo lame

  5. tianawarner says

    January 27, 2015 at 6:28 pm

    Thankfully there are a few alternative solutions out there, but I think many are missing the power of dynamic rendering. ArcGIS Online and CartoDB seem to offer the most in terms of this. The replacement Google suggests needs a bit of work in order to get everything Maps Engine had. I’ve blogged about some alternative solutions here: http://blog.safe.com/2015/01/6-google-maps-engine-alternatives/

    • chuck dudley says

      January 28, 2015 at 7:22 am

      I tried ArcGIS but it did not do what I need that Earth does. I know that WildLandFire.com and Google had a severe falling out over the engine dealings. Now they only use ESRI. Nothing in my view beats Earth.

  6. Martin Feuchtwanger says

    February 14, 2015 at 8:30 pm

    What exactly is/was Google Maps Engine? How does/did it relate to Google Earth API?

    • Purplehaze says

      March 17, 2015 at 5:09 am

      I don’t think the author really knows either or he would have described it in clear detail. Google since the first buyout of YT have been so out of touch with their fanbase it isn’t even funny! I prefer Yahoo’s *purple* format actually over both Microsoft and Google.

  7. Andrea says

    January 29, 2016 at 10:03 am

    GIS Cloud also offers an excellent alternative to Google Maps Engine API.

    You can find more info in this post: http://www.giscloud.com/blog/reinvent-your-workflow-gis-cloud-as-an-alternative-to-google-maps-engine/

  8. Jim B. says

    January 30, 2016 at 4:33 pm

    Google My Tracks is an excellent GPS tracker. I use it on every flight in my hot air balloon flights. It’s extremely valuable to me and I would pay a premium for it. It’s terrific. I hope they change their plans.

  9. Steven Appleton says

    February 3, 2016 at 12:51 pm

    I am not a GIS pro, but I regularly used the assessor parcel map layer for my work in real estate. Is there an alternative klm file that I can load into GE Pro? This deprecation really hurts.

  10. Ben M says

    May 18, 2016 at 2:23 pm

    CartoDB is a great choice, and they are apparently coming out with a new version of their editor which will enable some level of self-service location intelligence.



PLEASE NOTE: Google Earth Blog is no longer writing regular posts. As a result, we are not accepting new comments or questions about Google Earth. If you have a question, use the official Google Earth and Maps Forums or the Google Earth Community Forums.

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