Google APIs — Overview

You have used Google Maps on your phone. You've typed an address into a food delivery app and watched a live pin move as your rider approached. You've started typing a locality name and seen suggestions appear before you finished the word.

Every one of those features was built using the same APIs you are about to learn. They are commercial products that Google charges for — and they power every map-based app you've ever used.

The difference between you and those teams is not access. It is knowledge. The APIs are available to anyone with a Google account. This section covers exactly what you need to use them confidently.

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The "Why First" Scenario

You are building EduTrack. A parent registers their child and needs to enter their home address — but your text box accepts anything. One parent types "Banjarahills", another types "Banjara Hills", a third types "Banjara Hills Hyderabad TS 500034". All three are the same place. Your database has three different strings. None of them have coordinates. You cannot calculate which school branch is nearest to them.

A week later, you want to add a feature: show the customer a live map with the partner's moving pin as they travel to the address. You have the partner's GPS coordinates updating every 30 seconds. But you have no map to put them on.

Two separate problems. The same solution: Google APIs.

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The Excel Analogy

Think of Google APIs as pre-built Excel add-ins — but for mapping and AI.

When you want to plot data on a map in Excel, you don't build the map engine yourself. You use the built-in Maps chart type — someone at Microsoft already built the hard part. You just supply the data.

Google APIs work the same way. Google has spent billions building the world's most accurate map data, address database, and AI model. They package it as APIs — clean interfaces that let your app call "show me a map of this location" or "what are the coordinates of this address?" without building any of that infrastructure yourself.

You supply the question. Google's APIs supply the answer.

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The Five APIs You Will Use

Maps JavaScript API

What it does: Displays an interactive Google Map inside your app — the actual Google Maps experience embedded into your React screen or mobile app.

When you use it:

• EduTrack customer app: showing the partner's live location as they travel to the customer
• EduTrack partner app: showing the customer's address on a map when a job is assigned
• Any app that needs users to see a geographic location visually

Cost: ~$7 per 1,000 map loads.

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Places API

What it does: Address autocomplete — the user starts typing a locality or building name and sees real suggestions pulled from Google's database of every named place on Earth.

When you use it:

• Address entry in enrollment flows — instead of a free text box, a smart input that guides users to valid, structured addresses
• Search bars that need to resolve to real physical locations

Cost: ~$17 per 1,000 autocomplete sessions (a "session" covers all keystrokes in one address search, not per keystroke).

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Geocoding API

What it does: Converts a text address into precise GPS coordinates (latitude and longitude). The reverse also works — coordinates back into a readable address.

When you use it:

• After a customer selects their address from the Places autocomplete, you call Geocoding to get the exact { lat, lng } to store in your database
• Any time you need to go from "Banjara Hills, Hyderabad" to { lat: 17.4126, lng: 78.4071 }

Cost: $5 per 1,000 geocoding calls.

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Directions API

What it does: Given two points (partner's current location and customer's address), returns the route, distance, and estimated travel time.

When you use it:

• "Partner is 3 km away, ETA 12 minutes" — that message is a Directions API response
• Showing a route drawn on the map between origin and destination

Cost: $10 per 1,000 directions requests.

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Gemini API

What it does: Google's AI model — the equivalent of calling Claude's API but using Google's Gemini model. Generates text, analyses documents, answers questions, extracts structured data from unstructured input.

When you use it:

• Auto-generating a professional bio for a partner's profile from their basic inputs
• Extracting key fields from an uploaded document (name, address, ID number)
• Any AI text generation or analysis feature inside your app

Cost: Free tier covers 15 requests per minute and 1 million tokens per day — more than enough for any training project or early-stage app.

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The Billing Reality for Indian Apps

Google API pricing is published in US dollars. It sounds expensive until you calculate what the free credit actually covers.

Every Google Cloud account gets $200 (approximately ₹16,500) of free API credit every month. This credit resets at the start of each billing month. You are not charged until your usage exceeds this credit.

For the apps you will build:

An app with 1,000 active users — which is a successful early-stage product by any measure — will typically use a fraction of those numbers. Most apps never pay a rupee in their first year.

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Where API Keys Come From

All Google APIs are enabled and managed from the Google Cloud Console — the same place covered in the Google Cloud section. If you have completed the Google Cloud setup (enabling APIs and creating credentials), you already have an API key. This section assumes that setup is done.

The key questions this section answers are not how to create the key (that is covered in the Google Cloud section) — but how to use each API inside your React and React Native code.

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What You Will Have After This Section