Google geocoding - what response should there be to their new terms of service?
Per this
https://github.com/eileenmcnaughton/org.wikimedia.geocoder/issues/2
"Google's new Terms of Service coming into effect on June 11th prohibit "stor[ing] Google Maps Content for more than 30 days". "Google Maps Content" is explicitly defined to include geocoding results."
One of my hopes with the geocoder extension was to take a step towards getting geocoders out of core & put the responsibility on the sites using the software to understand their own terms of service (this is part of the message on the install screen "You are responsible for understanding the geocoder terms of service and ensuring you are working within them."). I was also intending to gently move people to open data solutions rather than proprietary ones.
In theory sites using geocoding in CiviCRM are complying with their terms of service using the tools CiviCRM provides.
However, perhaps the new terms of service force our hand to stop providing geocoding with Google as a service? If that is the case we would need to remove google geocoding from any releases published on the CiviCRM site (including 4.6 since that is published on the main downloads) and also consider whether to remove it from the extension.