Add Google basemaps about xyzservices

[martinfleis]

@giswqs With #65 there is a convenient way of getting Google's base maps as a TileProvider, so I suggest closing this issue and not including them directly in our JSON. Would it be okay with you? With your opengeos/leafmap#92 you can pass Google Hybrid to leafmap as

basemap = xyzservices.TileProvider.from_qms("Google Satellite Hybrid")
m = leafmap.Map()
m.add_basemap(basemap)

[martinfleis]

That would be a welcome contribution! Would you like to make a PR? I would add them as a single Bunch.

New providers should be added to https://github.com/geopandas/xyzservices/blob/main/provider_sources/xyzservices-providers.json. See the contributing docs https://xyzservices.readthedocs.io/en/latest/contributing.html#providers

[giswqs]

I will work on it and submit a PR later today.

[martinfleis]

Actually, can you ensure we can legally use those? I am not entirely sure about that based on https://developers.google.com/maps/faq#tos_tiles.

[giswqs]

This is interesting to know. I didn't realize that. I have been using these map tiles for years through the QGIS QuickMapServices Plugin. I am not sure how this plugin handles the legal issues.

• https://plugins.qgis.org/plugins/quick_map_services
• https://qms.nextgis.com
• https://github.com/nextgis/quickmapservices

[martinfleis]

It seems that they just don't care.

I was wondering such an obvious source is not already included. See leaflet-extras/leaflet-providers#236, leaflet-extras/leaflet-providers#288, and leaflet-extras/leaflet-providers#22 as a reference.

Strictly speaking, we are not using those tiles, just providing their metadata so we wouldn't violate TOS if we included them. But anyone who would use them from xyzservices would if I understand correctly. A bit of a grey zone here (but I think that leafmap does violate it).

[giswqs]

Thanks for linking these references. I agree it is a grey area. I will change leafmap's default basemap to other free tiles rather than Google Maps.

So, do we still want to include their metadata in xyzservices? I can submit a PR if you want. If not, we can close this issue.

[giswqs]

I have changed leafmap's default basemap from Google Maps to OpenStreetMap, but I keep the metadata of Google map tiles for users who want to use them at their own risk. If Google comes after me, I will then remove them.
opengeos/leafmap#91

[martinfleis]

So, do we still want to include their metadata in xyzservices?

I am really not sure. If we do so, we should add a notice to the docs that users should always check the TOS of the provider (which we maybe should do anyway).

@darribas @jorisvandenbossche any thoughts on this?

[giswqs]

Yes, this is a much better solution. Thank you.