The announcement last year that Google is shutting down Fusion Tables convinced me that Google has finally begun to slip as a company that I value and trust. They made the announcement that Google Fusion Tables will not be available after Dec. 3, 2019.
"Fusion Tables WAS an experimental data visualization web application to gather, visualize, and share data tables."
I am now fully convinced that Google is on the downslope of its demise and I predict that the company may crumble in the next 10 years or be broken apart into peace very soon. Core users/publishers like me are finally fed up with the company giving away products for free and then ripping the rug right out from underneath users. They have shut down so many great products and every announcement Google or Alphabet (whatever the name is) seems to be more about GREED and not about INNOVATION.
In the past, Google had been balanced in its' approach to making money with products and has not gouged users by charging too much. However, in 2018 this all changed with raising prices on Google Maps by 2500% in one year. Yes, I am not lying.
What does this mean in real money context? Here is an example. Before the massive Google Maps price hike, we use to pay Google approximately .50 cents per thousand visitors that viewed our maps. Now we are required to pay $7-10 per thousand. Unfair and just wrong and why every small map publisher is leaving Google.
Our public safety maps are monetized by Google AdSense advertising and usually get between $5-$10 per thousand visitors. I think this goes without saying that the Google Maps price increase has effectively shut our business down or we have to move off of Google Maps. Google just cannibalized their own publisher customer base effectively shooting themselves in the foot.
Google Maps data is wonderful but their tools and API are still very complicated to use and required lots of advanced programming experience to use. Fusion Tables was the solution for many years that would allow someone without or limited programming knowledge to publish and manage data on Google Maps. You simply plug in your API key and you can publish maps like we do across 10+ public safety sites like PhotoEnforced.com and others where we have 5,000+ visitors per day.
Tools like MapBox, Carto, ESRI, ArcGIS, GIS Cloud, MapInfo, Here, Tableau are all great visualization tools. However, none of them have the features to manage data in the cloud seamlessly connecting your map to a SQL or hosted database like Fusion Tables had. This is the genius behind Fusion Tables that they are effectively throwing away. Google Maps will now be harder to use for someone that does not have advanced API programming skills as it does not have easy to use tools to publish an iframe or javascript map. Hopefully, a company like Amazon, Apple, or Uber can actually put out a mapping product to compete.
It's very sad to see that Google or Alphabet has become a walled garden of greedy angry nerds.
The solution to monetizing Fusion Tables WAS AND STILL IS VERY SIMPLE. All Google has to do is look within at its greatest asset and product Ad Sense. Why not monetize all of the current maps being published with an Ad Sense banner or text ads? Sure you might actually make more money and keep your customers happy? Seems like a win/win to me? Or have the angry mapping nerds kiboshed this idea out of fear?
List of Google Graveyard products shutdown.
We would even be interested in taking over the entire Fusion Tables business with an investor group. Crickets!!!