Thread by @QuinnyPig

Ooh, Amazon Location Service is now GA from @awscloud! I can't wait to use it.

What will I be using it for, you ask? A thread!

Not to scrape anything, or to use it to attempt to avoid using Amazon Location Service, apparently. Uh... okay?

Nor for an in-vehicle infotainment system, because of reasons, apparently.

Nor will I apparently be caching the results of a pay-per-use service, because that would indicate actual Customer Obsession.

Remember those AAA triptik paper route planners? Want to relive your childhood with a service that prints those out? Screw you.

And branding / advertising is also Right Out.

But past that it's a great service. I can't wait to use it for the three use cases or so that AWS will permit me to use it for that are also economically feasible!

Holy crap, go read the pricing page. I'll wait. This is the most convoluted pricing I've ever seen for an @awscloud service.

aws.amazon.com/location/prici…

Google: "We're going to raise our prices by 14x in some cases for our mapping API."
Amazon: "We'll never raise a price, but if you can understand how much it'll cost in advance you deserve the Svierges Riksbank prize in economic sciences."

Before the "it's the geolocation providers' requirements!" whining starts, I'll point out that Apple basically brought the entire cell carrier market worldwide to heel, but sure: you're not powerful enough to slap around a couple of mapping providers. Okay, Amazon.

In conclusion, yes: you can use Amazon Location Service as a database. You encode your data to a map tile by starting a border war, and the cost is enormous--but still cheaper than AWS's data egress pricing.