Can ArcGIS Online consume a Google API?

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08-10-2015 08:06 AM
deleted-user-BAik00wdZwPa
New Contributor II

We're creating a web map that would benefit from bringing in a dataset from a public facing webpage that uses a map with a Google API. Is there any way to take advantage of this API in ArcGIS Online?

The website owner has a shapefile that is updated as new data comes in and is then served out through the Google API because they don't have access to ARcGIS Server. We'd like to access the data live as it gets updated instead of requesting a shapefile on a regular basis and updating our own map service. Is this possible or does anyone know of a workaround?

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2 Replies
TimWitt2
MVP Alum

Hey Matthew,

do they use it within google as a kml file? If so, you can use a kml file within the ArcGIS javascript api:

KML | ArcGIS API for JavaScript

Tim

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ChrisSmith7
Frequent Contributor

Matt,

I don't believe this will affect your use case, but, because you mention consuming a Google API within ArcGIS, I wanted to share a word of caution for anyone who may come across this thread...

Carefully read through the Google API TOS... you may find quite a few constraints that make it very difficult to use outside of the Google ecosystem. Take, for instance, the geocoding API... It is strictly for non-commercial, proof-of-concept usage. To use it commercially, you would need to purchase a Google for Work license (minimum 10-20k), and, on top of that, all of the lat/longs you receive from the API absolutely, positively, cannot be used outside of a Google map. That is, you couldn't consume the API and display the points on an Esri basemap, or any map for that matter (aside from Google's map)!

As a matter of fact, they are wary about letting you store the points in a db, too, and only give the go ahead if you make a case for performance needs - they actually want you to geocode your addresses every time you need to display them (on a Google map), which, of course, uses credits.

The reasoning behind this, according to Google, is to maintain a unified user-experience. They want the user to receive up-to-date data and do not want to be associated with any misalignment of features. Honestly, it's a disconnect between what business users need and what Google is willing to offer - fortunately, there are alternatives (like Esri's geocode service).