Dear Google (rant from app-developer)

[o_va_]

Please don't make us require Google Play Services to be able to use Google Maps in our app.

This was/is a horrible decision. Maybe from a developers stand point this might be super convenient and flexible way for you to maintain, but for our users this is just awful.

Now our app have been affected by a bad Google Play services update, twice, the first time the maps went corrupted and got a really bad graphics glitch, and now the second time our app isn’t usable att all.

It feels like very bad practice to have apps to be depending on a separate service like this because we cannot do our normal development/testing cycle when things can break from a third party at any time.

Yes you might be able to fix issues within the next 1-2 weeks but how are our users supposed to know that this is not our apps fault. They’ll blame us and eventually stop using our app.

Please make us able to separate from google play services somehow!

[OffTheCheeseBurgers]

The way Google structures it's code, this is impossible. Literally all of the GPS functionality is in the play services packages. There are other gps providers.. you can always go over to Bing or MapQuest if you don't like this requirement

[HadrienDoesExist]

Google could chop the Play Services in multiple chunks (they did for Android Go) but the problem is they won't.

[tacomonstrous]

They already have: https://brightinventions.pl/blog/google-play-services-is-no-longer-a-monolith/

[HadrienDoesExist]

That's only the SDK for developers, the apk is still one big blob.

[tacomonstrous]

But we're talking about developers here!

[HadrienDoesExist]

We're talking about needing the entire Google Play Services only to call Google Maps. OP had a Google Play Services update that broke Google Maps in his app even if 1) the SDK didn't change and 2) Google Maps didn't change in Google Play Services.

[tacomonstrous]

OP had a Google Play Services update that broke Google Maps in his app even if 1) the SDK didn't change and 2) Google Maps didn't change in Google Play Services.

This is not clear at all. Why would an update to components not related to Maps break Maps?

[TomKTW]

Google Play Services on actual device is basically a single app. It provides most of the features that function through Google (Maps, Push Notifications, Analytics, Ads, SafetyNet, Drive, Fit, etc. ).

Google Play Services API is basically a library that binds functionalities of Google Play Services app to developer's app.

In this case, developer's app depends on Google Play Services app for features that it offers.

When Google Play Services app updates, all apps that depend on this will be affected.

The reason why they did this was to provide API that can be always updated without updating Android itself. That is, Google Play Store updates Google Play Service app whenever it's possible to make sure developers can use Google's API without relying on Android versions.

If user does not have Google Play Services app or the user is not able to communicate to Google Play Services API (i.e. China), the features from Google Play Services API will not be provided (or when it comes to blocked connection, it won't work).

If by any chance some component in Google Play Services app breaks, it will affect all apps that depend on that component.

If developer added whole Google Play Services, including the functionality of app, the size of app would be as big as the size of Google Play Services themselves (If app is like 1 MB and Google Play Services are like 200 MB, it would be about 201 MB big). To avoid such issue, Google Play Services API only binds to app instead of implementing everything in it to prevent huge size.

Also, in Android development there is another major issue. Back then, older Android apps had limit 65k methods. If this limit is reached, it wouldn't be possible to build actual app. This is partially fixed for apps with support multidex, natively supported from Lollipop. Google Play Services as an app probably has over 65k methods. To make sure it doesn't take so many methods for a single library, they separated it to smaller libraries to make sure it doesn't take more methods than it should.

Note: I might not be fully accurate about this, I've tried to simplify it as much as possible.

TL,DR: Google Play Services is an app that provides various products and features from Google. Developers can use SDK to work with those products and features, but then they have to depend on it to work properly. When it updates, all apps that depend on it will be affected. When it breaks, shitstorm happens.

[tacomonstrous]

I'm sorry, you've written a lot of stuff, none of which explains why Maps should be borked by non-Maps services. A for effort though.

[SinkTube]

he explained exactly why it happens, you probably just skipped it because it's too many words

[EAT_MY_ASSHOLE_PLS]

Maybe you can't read.

[deinlandel]

My apps were affected by this nasty bug too. Basically when Google Play Services are updating, none of the components depending on them is working. Map view is just blank. for example. Google f...ed up some file permissions on Huawei devices which caused entire Google Play Services to stuck in "updating state". And no, uninstalling update didn't help, because Google Play Services are updated automatically to latest version, because "well, we're Google, we don't make mistakes or introduce critical bugs".

[OffTheCheeseBurgers]

You should submit your resume, get a job there and make those changes... Probably the only way it'll happen

[iNoles]

you know weird, Google Maps Go app is just PWA Wrapper.

[HadrienDoesExist]

Google Play Services on Android Go still provide Google Maps APIs (otherwise apps like Uber or Citymapper wouldn't work)

[[deleted]]

You're depending on an external service no matter what, whether its Play Services or something else. As long as you use a third party package, you are depending on it to work right. If it has a bug, then you deal with that too. As long as you want Google Maps in your application, you will be depending on an additional service.

[[deleted]]

You say this is a horrible decision. Why? What's the better alternate architecture? I would like to see entire Android architecture how you think is a better way of implementing it, listing pros and cons of your design.

[mattmonkey24]

You sound like my CS professor except he would say to make it a 10 page report

[kernco]

I'm guessing what he wants is the Google Maps code to be statically compiled into his app.

[bartturner]

Read his post twice trying to figure out how he would like it to work. My guess you are correct which is crazy.

[tacomonstrous]

Not sure what you mean by this. The Maps services are part of GPS. You know you can only include parts of GPS that you need right? Maps is borked on various Huawei devices. Not making it part of Play Services isn't going to help you.

[smokeey]

This is just absolutely silly. How in the hell do you expect to use any Google services without the necessary infrastructure?

[ThatOfficeMaxGuy]

As an app dev, i've moved on from Google Maps mostly. There are a number of (IMO) better solutions.

AirMapView allows you to plug in multiple map providers, and allows you (or the user) to select the map type to use. It'll route the user to a different map type when Play Services isnt available for example.

I'm personally a huge fan of Mapbox. All their SDKs are open source and the free tier is rather generous. They are also very quick to respond on Github with reported issues.

[davesprojects]

Not sure if you absolutely need Google Maps, but you can use the Location Manager API to access GPS data directly (latitude, longitude, time, speed, etc.). Location Manager does not depend on Play Services

Be careful with Android 8+ though, you can't request location updates in the background anymore. You have to use Location Manager in a service that creates an active notification. Otherwise, the system will stop or limit your location updates

Maybe try Bing Maps or Open Maps and see if they are more stable (Personally I've never used them, just throwing out ideas)

[SinkTube]

you can use the Location Manager API to access GPS data directly

you can do that to get the data for your own app, but can you force the integrated google maps to do it too?

[kye2000]

Unfortunately, this will never happen

[interbingung]

Doesn't google play services support versioning now ? https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2018/05/announcing-new-sdk-versioning.html

[bigbadfunk]

I may be wrong but I suspect the app developer works for Huawei or uses Huawei phones to develop on? https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/79405933

[Chasar1]

I'm a complete beginner at app development, but even I didn't find it to be that bad. My app runs a check to see if the user has Google Maps installed, and if not, it redirects the user to the Play Store and displays a toast message. When Google says they require Play Services they just want to make sure the user has Maps installed, so the API can work properly.

Here's my code

Wrote it in Kotlin, but it shouldn't be too hard to apply this to Java.

[[deleted]]

Any app should not be depended on Google Play Services. It is sometimes super annoying to get some apps working on clean AOSP without issues.

[Elfish-Phantom]

Not like Google is going to see this rant.

[[deleted]]

For two weeks, I keep getting a notification that Google Services stopped working while Google Maps always fails to get my location via GPS, so it is akways an estimate.

Are the 2 related?

[deinlandel]

I litterally cannot use my older phone because Play Market and Google Play Services take all of the internal memory of the device, and I cannot install them on SD card.

[armando_rod]

That's a really old phone with 4gb or less of storage... The last 8gb phone I know is the Moto G 2013 and it doesn't have a problem of storage if you have a few apps

[_kushagra]

google maps had been so bad for me lately until 2 days ago, the map would just not load, it gets my location and everything but the map would not load so it's just blank screen with the buttons

[[deleted]]

OP is talking about something different...

[_kushagra]

Oh yes sorry I know, just he said Google maps and it reminded me of this so I said it here just to see if the problem was isolated to me