[carlosinfantes]

The place-name resolver calls FindPlaceFromText from googlemaps.github.io/maps, which is backed by the legacy Places API. Google has designated that API as Legacy — no new feature development, and the pricing FAQ states the legacy services are expected to be turned down in the coming years.

Why this matters in practice

A deployment whose project has not enabled places-backend.googleapis.com gets REQUEST_DENIED from Maps, and the resolver turns it into a 500 (codes.Internal):

failed to resolve place names: maps: REQUEST_DENIED - You are calling a legacy API,
which is not enabled for your project. To get newer features and more functionality,
switch to the Places API (New) or Routes API.

Every request naming a place absent from the KG fails that way — including through the MCP server, where the raw upstream error reaches the caller. Google’s own error text points at the fix this PR implements.

The change

The resolver only ever needed one thing: given a text query, return place ids. That maps one-to-one onto SearchText in Places API (New), so this swaps the client and narrows the interface to what the caller actually uses:

FindPlaceIDsFromText(ctx context.Context, query string) ([]string, error)

The existing comment already described MapsClient as "a thin facade ... for ease of testing", so this keeps that shape while dropping the leaked SDK types from the signature. findPlaceIDsForEntity collapses to a single delegating call.

The field mask is pinned to places.id. Text Search bills at the highest tier of any field requested, so requesting only the id keeps the call in the cheapest SKU — which also carries a larger monthly free allowance than the legacy Find Place SKU it replaces.

Narrowing the interface removes the last references to the legacy module, so googlemaps.github.io/maps is dropped from go.mod entirely.

Version pin

cloud.google.com/go/maps is pinned to v1.28.0: v1.29.0 and later require go >= 1.25, and this module is on go 1.24.0. Happy to bump it if you would rather move the toolchain.

Verification

• go build ./... — clean
• go vet ./internal/maps/... ./internal/server/recon/... — clean
• go test ./internal/server/recon/... — passes (recon/golden needs Bigtable credentials and was not run)
• FakeMapsClient contract unchanged: "Hawaii" still resolves to hawaii_place_id, anything else returns empty

Note: the Terraform in datacommonsorg/datacommons would need a matching change — enabling places.googleapis.com and updating the API key apiTargets, where the entry is currently the non-qualified string places_backend. Happy to send that separately if this direction looks right.

[gemini-code-assist]

Code Review

This pull request migrates the Google Maps integration from the legacy googlemaps.github.io/maps library to the official cloud.google.com/go/maps Places API client. It replaces the FindPlaceFromText method with FindPlaceIDsFromText using the new SearchText endpoint, which includes setting a narrow field mask (places.id) to optimize billing. Feedback suggests wrapping the generic error returned by SearchText with a more descriptive message and ensuring only non-empty place IDs are appended to the returned slice.

[gemini-code-assist]

To adhere to defensive programming practices and the repository's general rules, we should:

1. Wrap the generic error returned by SearchText with a more descriptive, user-friendly error message to aid in debugging.
2. Ensure we only append non-empty place IDs to the returned slice, filtering out any potential nil or empty values.

Note: You may need to import the "fmt" package if it is not already imported.

Suggested change

	resp, err := c.client.SearchText(ctx, &placespb.SearchTextRequest{TextQuery: query})
	if err != nil {
	return nil, err
	}
	placeIDs := make([]string, 0, len(resp.GetPlaces()))
	for _, place := range resp.GetPlaces() {
	placeIDs = append(placeIDs, place.GetId())
	}
	resp, err := c.client.SearchText(ctx, &placespb.SearchTextRequest{TextQuery: query})
	if err != nil {
	return nil, fmt.Errorf("failed to search text via Places API: %w", err)
	}
	placeIDs := make([]string, 0, len(resp.GetPlaces()))
	for _, place := range resp.GetPlaces() {
	if id := place.GetId(); id != "" {
	placeIDs = append(placeIDs, id)
	}
	}

References

1. Wrap generic errors from underlying functions with more descriptive, user-friendly error messages.

[carlosinfantes]

Thanks, both points applied in 711d5c5: the SearchText error is now wrapped with %w, and candidates without an id are skipped.

I applied them by hand rather than through the suggestion block, because the block was written against the first commit and would have dropped MaxResultCount: 1. That cap was added deliberately: findPlaceIDsForEntity only keeps placeIDs[0], and without it Text Search returns up to 20 results that are billed and then discarded.