Is Google Maps blocking me?

Question

I'm programming web application that works with Google Maps and I need to generate PDF output so I decided to use static API. My application will be using set of 1500 small map images (100*100px). I dont want to ask Google for every image thousand times a day so I wrote a script to download all images and save it to my server where images will be used from. After downloading 300 images my server gets this error:

Warning: readfile(http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/staticmap?size=100x100&maptype=roadmap&markers=icon:http://mediup.martinstrouhal.cz/arrs/210.png%7Cshadow:false%7C50.078522,14.436551&sensor=false&zoom=16) [function.readfile]: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.0 403 Forbidden

Does this mean that google is blocking me permanently?

Answer 1

You are missing the API key.

Without including your API key The Streetview Images API is throttled by IP to 1000 images per 24 hours and 5 images per minute, both of which you are likely to hit if you do not use the key. With the key you can pull 25000 images / day

Format should be: http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/streetview?size=400x400&location=40.720032,-73.988354&sensor=false&key=API_KEY

Docs for streetview include how to get an API key. https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/streetview/?csw=1