Technical information on this site may be out of date : no updates since 2015

Free services may have hidden costs

December 8 2008 : posted under web 2.0

There are many great services online that can help build fantastic websites at little cost.

In particular Google maps and you tube offer facilities that may not otherwise be available at no financial cost.

There has always been a bit of doubt with these services, what if your site depends on them and then Google changes the way they work.

Interesting to see adverts now appearing over images in You Tube

I used to work for a charity who still use you tube video on their site, it would be quite odd if this became overlaid with adverts.

There’s an interesting post on Google Maps API license the key concern here is the extent of rights to your data that Google take in return for their service.

Casual users may not bother reading the full terms and conditions of these services; but business users should take the time.

These services are valuable, and it may well be worth taking the risk after all Maps and videos have now been available without ads for some years. On the other hand some sites may choose  to host their own mapping or video to keep full control.

I’ve worked on a couple of projects that built their own mapping

Incorporating video in a Drupal site without a third party service seems fairly standard, there are several good flash video players available.