HTML5 geolocation vs Google Maps Geolocation api

user_542251 0
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I'm a bit confused as to why I would choose to use the limited access Google Maps Geolocation API over the free and (apparently) unlimited navigator.geolocation feature of HTML5?

As far as I can tell the only advantage of the Google version is it's increased support for browsers such as IE8. Am I missing something significant here? Or is there little difference?

On further investigation we noticed that when we used navigator.geolocation in Chrome it actually makes a call to the Google api to get the information (backed up by this answer from 6 years ago). So this begs the question, is it still limited? If so by how much in what period?

google-maps html javascript
3 Answers

I just want to mention that if this is all you need, then no, there is no reason to go with the paid Google service--the spec for that service is basically built into the browser at this point.

The Google Maps API comes with many more features than that, however--things like reverse geocoding, and the full visual tool featureset available with maps.

So yes, getting a user's lat/lon is 'free'--no need to pay for that feature by itself.

user_45264790
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