email from Google RE: Google Maps Platform and new pricing

I just found out Google sent me an email about their new pricing for Google map API.

I have not started running my site yet but have been building it for a while and have always thought it is free to use Google Map on our site. So am I wrong about that? Or is this a barnd new thing? thank you.

This is the email.

Hi,

Today we are announcing important changes, including our new name – Google Maps Platform, a simplified product structure, pay as you go pricing for all, and more. Please take a few minutes to review the announcement to familiarize yourself with the upcoming changes.

We would like to highlight a few updates that may impact your implementation. Beginning June 11th, we are launching our new pricing plan and providing all users access to support. We’ll continue to offer a free tier — all developers will receive $200 of free monthly usage of our core products.

In addition, this change will require you to enable billing and associate it with all of your Google Maps Platform projects. Creating a billing account helps us better understand your usage so we can continue developing helpful products. It also allows you to scale easily with less downtime and fewer performance issues if your product grows beyond the $200 of free monthly usage. For additional visibility and control you can set daily quotas or billing alerts.