Just trying to understand the API pricing in a specific business situation is a challenge, as is clear from seeing the Google price sheet. The billing appears as a large, non itemized bill.
The structure of the API fees will also significantly impact several areas of the software industry. Since API cost scales with frequency of access, there are very negative implications to companies who would like to use Google data in a real time web analytics platform. Given that Google offers a free low end analytics tool, could this be a hint that Google will be targeting higher end web analytics in the future?
Venture investors would need to be aware of how open Google will be with APIs going forward. Any startup that is working on a mashup that would take information from Google via an API would have an increased level of risk. (What if Google begins to charge for the spreadsheet API, or the maps API?) Just this week, it appears that Google is removing new access to its SOAP search API as well.