[UPDATE] Important Notice from the Wikimapia Team

Dear friends,

Starting from May 2018 we received letters from Google Maps about changes in prices for its services. We didn’t have any worries as these letters noticed significantly discounted price for our big volume.

-“You are eligible for a significantly discounted price on your monthly bill, based on your usage over the last three months.”

When it comes closely to the date of price change we contacted Google maps representative and found out that the “discounted price” will have 800% increase (8 times) compare to the current payments. The “discount” had meaning that we won’t be paying 1500% more, but only 800%. We tried to convince Google Maps representative to leave the payments unchanged offering collaboration and data. We had no success.

Unfortunately, from July, 16 we won’t have Google Maps satellite or map images on Wikimapia as we could not afford paying for them.
We are not desperate, Google may come that it was a bad move to raise prices so high, or we will, sooner or later, find out other satellite providers with lower usage costs.

Also we will try to find solutions on how to bring money resources to Wikimapia for its development and satellite imagery.

Again, we are sorry for this situation, we are doing our best,
Alexandre Koriakine and Evgeniy Saveliev

P.s. “There’s no point in acting surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now.” @Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

[UPDATE]
We (all who uses Google Maps) were credited by Google for two more months, so the Google imagery layer is not going to be turned off today.