you cost geoguessr $0, and you had no idea (or: turn your adblock off)
written on 2025-05-15, last updated 2025-05-22
update: geoguessr have officially cancelled their ewc participation. shoutout to everyone who participated in the blackout. this article has been updated accordingly.
the way google maps' js sdk works can be quite funny sometimes. whether it's hiding useful data or breaking in strange ways the website doesn't *, it has quite a few quirks.
today's quirk of note is the fact that, if you have an adblocker on, the websites you are using are not paying for your streetview api usage. how come? well, as it turns out, most of google's internal endpoints don't record usage at all - instead, any event that may cost the developer money is routed through a single endpoint called QuotaService.RecordEvent.
the reason why this occurs is actually quite simple: google charges you the exact same amount of money for any dynamic streetview embed, regardless of whether only the first pano was loaded, or the user has decided to spend 2 hours moving around across hundreds of kilometres of coverage. as such, attaching it to an image request can't be their solution - there is very little to distinguish between loading an entirely new image, and a user just clicking around using the arrows - but one of them is meant to cost money, and the other one isn't.
this method does, however, have one very notable drawback (for google, that is): if the endpoint is blocked (either by an adblocker, or by a website disallowing QuotaService.RecordEvent from loading), google will not charge the developer for api usage. and, as it turns out, easylist's easyprivacy blocklist, which is included in ublock origin by default, does, in fact, block this endpoint.
the latter parts of the article are now outdated. if you still want to read them, you can click here to expand, but everything in there is outdated.
for the most part, this is not necessarily a bad thing - with the fees that google charges, many smaller developers end up having to pay a lot of money out of pocket. but, specifically for geoguessr users, this means that i implore you to turn your adblocker off specifically for geoguessr.com.
why? well, geoguessr recently announced that they are bringing geoguessr to the esports world cup, an event hosted by saudi arabia's government. as you may know, the saudi arabian government makes homosexuality punishable by the death penalty, imprisons women's rights activists, conducts a genocidal war in yemen, and kills migrants en masse.
of course, the best way to protest this partnership would be to cancel your geoguessr subscription, but i understand that this is not viable for everyone - the alternatives are lacklustre, and the competitive scene is entirely focused on geoguessr. as such, i ask you to do the next best thing: turn off your adblocker on geoguessr.com - at least that way, they have to pay for you.
(alterntaively, you can go into your ublock origin settings, then my filters, and add the line @@||maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js/QuotaService.RecordEvent$domain=geoguessr.com to specifically just enable the endpoint for geoguessr.com. thanks to zilla for suggesting this.)
* this is a discord link from this server. i will probably write a blogpost on it one day, but i am not making any promises - i have more ideas than time.