Google Maps Geocoding - UK Problems

I have been running some geocoding stuff - picking up lat and long data from given post codes for a little project I am involved in right now. Much to my dismay, I noticed that it had stopped working the other day. The request to Google’s API had not changed; the problem seemed to be with the response from the API. Delving a little deeper, I noticed a 602 (location not found error) being returned in place of what should have been lat and long data.

I finally unearthed this thread on the Google Map API groups site that explains in more detail what has been going on, and I quote Pamela (a google employee) on the subject:

“Hi developers -
Thanks for your patience while we sorted this out.
Earlier this week, we fixed a bug that was allowing the precise
location of full UK postcodes on the Google Maps API. This is
functionality that, due to data usage terms and conditions, we cannot
yet offer our API users but we hope to be able to offer this service
in the future.
As some of you noticed, full postcodes now return low-precision
results. This should be more satisfactory than the previously returned
602. Apologies for the inconvenience this caused many of you. We’re
working on creating a table that more fully details our regional
coverage within the API for the various services, so that there’ll be
no more surprises in the future.”

Boo, what we’ve all taken for functionality has in fact been a bug all along.

Personally, I don’t buy this. Someone, i.e. the Ordnance Survey, Post Office or whoever has objected to this ‘bug’, because it probably puts a dent in their revenue streams.

All I can say to that is ‘free our data’.

As James Harvard writes later in the thread:

“Have a quick look at http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/ to get an idea of what to say, then head over to http://www.writetothem.com/ and tap out a quick message.”

I agree.