All Good Things…
Well, EarthCache was fun and useful while it lasted, but Groundspeak, the owners of geocaching.com have put an end to it. On September 9th, I received an e-mail from them asking me to remove the service. My server has since been blocked from making any requests to their site.
Since I use this server as a proxy, I think I’ll just take this as a cue to quit visiting geocaching.com altogether. Maybe I’ll change my mind later on, but right now it’s just frustrating to see innovation stifled like this. Of course I’m sure that they’ll offer an identical service soon — their e-mail even alludes to it — though it will be limited to paying customers.
I have no problem with Groundspeak making money from geocaching. I like to make money too. It’s just not how I believe a company should operate. For some good examples, look at Flickr, Google Maps and Last.fm. All of these sites offer developers an API (something that costs money to develop) to encourage 3rd-party innovation, which only serves to make their product more popular and valuable. Flickr and Google are both for-profit organizations, but have harnessed the free labor of other developers.
Back to the present situation, feel free to take my PHP source and run it from your own server. As far as I know, they’re only blocking this IP, and have not changed any of their site to otherwise disrupt the script.
One final response to a few words from Groundspeak on their forums implying that this script wastes their CPU, etc. It has employed a strong caching (ha) mechanism that massively limits the number of requests needed. I don’t believe that my script has impacted the site at all, except for possibly getting a few more people interested in the hobby.
Best of luck with it and feel free to comment here with your opinions and results. Thanks for the support and e-mails — it’s been fun!
September 21st, 2005 at 4:19 am
Thanks for publishing the source.
And screw Groundspeak. Bastards!
September 21st, 2005 at 10:57 am
Darn them! You did great work and I hate to see this happen.
September 21st, 2005 at 11:23 am
Hate to be a groundspeak ’stooge’, but frankly I agree with the decision. Even if you weren’t ‘massively impacting the server, you *were* violating the TOS (I don’t think you’ll argue that.).
They can’t just look the other way either, or when someone else comes along and does a similar thing (but perhaps not so ‘cache’ friendly), they’ll point to your site and say ‘well he’s allowed to do it, why can’t I’. Also, I’m not sure about the legal ramifications of selectively enforcing the TOS (if you don’t enforce it at one point, does that make you less entitled to enforce it elsewhere?)
I agree an API would be a nice addition, but I don’t think it would/could work quite the same way for gc.com as it does for google. Their business model is totally different.
The APIs that I’m sure you’d want them to implement would open really great big holes in what makes people become premium members, and would probably cause a great deal of financial loss to the company.
Think about it, they develop some commands that allow you to download cache coordinates and cache name. All of a sudden there is a really simple way to get a good portion of what people use pocket queries for, without using pocket queries. Someone (like myself, or yourself) writes a program to use the API, and feed something like GSAK with it, and all of a sudden I don’t use my pocket queries, and so I ask myself why I bother being a premium member.
I suppose use of the API could be limited to premium members, but then you have to restrict and enforce the way different sites set up to use the API, and I don’t think Jeremy et al. have the resources to do this.
Anyways, best of luck.
September 24th, 2005 at 10:40 am
I was introduced to Geocaching when I saw your network link on the ogle earth blog. Since I dont own a gps device, I have only ever found caches through google earth.
I have even introduced many of my friends to geocaching since, bringing a number of new members to the site. Now that I have no way of finding new caches, I guess I will have to give up the hobby, as will my friends.
Personally I think the decision is quiet silly: by allowing, or offering their own, free kml, they could have potentially reached the entire market of google earth enthusiasts. Wheras by offering the service for a free they are realistically just giving existing users another reason to upgrade their accounts.
btw, thanks a lot for the source. :]
–sidd
September 24th, 2005 at 10:42 am
“Wheras by offering the service for a free…”
should be fee
September 24th, 2005 at 2:42 pm
Truly groundbreaking work and innovative thinking. Wish you would post more. What else are you working on? What are your post-grad plans? Please email me.
September 24th, 2005 at 3:25 pm
That really sucks. I liked the functionality of your script - it’s a shame Geocaching.com has reacted the way that they did. Yes, their business model is different from Google’s but it’s almost like they’re saying, “Hey, that’s a great idea. You can’t use it anymore but we’ll be happy to take it and charge for its use.” I wish there were a viable alternative to GC.com - there are many parts of their business and actions that I disagree with.
September 25th, 2005 at 8:50 am
Andy,
sorry to hear about this situation. Your script actually made me aware of geocaching in the first place. I cannot understand why they would limit the methods by which people can find out about their service? You know, word of mouth marketing etc.
Having tried to use their interface today to find some local caches, maybe they were just embarrased? I almost gave up and got your script up and running instead. It might have been quicker!
September 25th, 2005 at 10:42 am
Cool scipt, thanx for publishing it. We were using it since early release. Now, when it stoped working we were like withou eyes. Works perfectly on local engine.
Good luck and more good scripts like this.
September 25th, 2005 at 8:25 pm
Thanks for reintroducing me to geocaching for a couple of weeks…… it was so cool to look at a map and visually see all the caches around town…. found a couple too! I first heard about these caches a year or two ago but didnt have a gps. Then surfing through the internet i found your little gem of an idea… well thanks again and good luck!!
September 27th, 2005 at 1:38 am
[…] Andy Fowler created a Google Earth script that displayed geocaches via Google Earth. Andy’s script was well written and was responsible for raising awareness of geocaching. Given the massive interest in Google Earth, it would seem sensible for geocaching.com’s owners to encourage innovation like this. However, Geocaching.com have asked Andy to cease and desist. […]
September 28th, 2005 at 7:10 am
It was a great script while it lasted and the more innovative sites have taken it up. http://geocaching.com.au/xml/googleearth is a network link that shows the caches in Australia and New Zealand. The caches appear when the map stops moving. They also have google earth links on the cache pages Its a pity groundspeak aren’t as helpful.
September 28th, 2005 at 4:16 pm
More on Geocaching Hacks
Andy Fowler wrote a PHP script that scrapes Geocaching.com and puts them in a KML format which is used by Google Maps. But Geocaching.com made him take it down! So he put up the script for anyone to hack on.
Robert Lipe, the author of GPSBabelwr…
December 29th, 2005 at 7:08 pm
Its funny. I started writing a php script to do the same thing several months ago. I stopped when I had a problem parsing my lat lons from my search I was doing using wget commands. I haven’t looked at your code entirely, but just from what I saw.. it looks SOOOOO much nicer than mine. Thanks for making me feel like a desperate and pathetic programmer. =P
but seriously! groundspeak is against everything geocaching represents. The entire reason most people love to geocache is because its free. you can just enjoy yourself, and live a little. Its not about making money!!!!
Its unbelievable they combined it with google earth, but charge for the kml files. Its crazy they charge a membership to use their own map online to zoom in and zoom out, and pan around. They have the ability, and RESTRICT IT??? are you serious??
thanks again… i’m going to try to get the script working on my server. Does it still work???
Let me know if there is anything I need to tweak or fix to make it work, but I’ll be more than happy to sure the URL with people until I guess… my server gets banned as well.
hehhehe bastards!
December 30th, 2005 at 12:53 am
So.. this script works with google earth, not google maps. How exactly.. do I get this to work???
I’m getting an invalid BBOX when I click on it. I added database tables, and configured it to connect to my database, but it doesn’t seem like it gets past the creation of the BBOX?
How do you send the script the initial lat lon before it searches for caches near the lat longs?