Remove image charts as they have been officially deprecated by Google

[winston]

The Image Charts portion of Google Chart Tools has been officially deprecated as of April 20, 2012.
It will continue to work as per our deprecation policy.

https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/gallery/genericimagechart
https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/gallery/imagepiechart
https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/gallery/imagelinechart
https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/gallery/imagebarchart
https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/gallery/imagesparkline

[rcaught]

Wouldn't it be better to only remove them after they stop working?

I know I still use them for Android =< 2.3 support, etc.

[winston]

Even though Google will provide support until 2015 as per their deprecation policy https://developers.google.com/chart/terms, I was hoping to be one step ahead, so that folks don't become dependent on the charts (which will be something obsolete) while using this gem.

Of course, I am ok with keeping it in for the time being if there are no better alternatives out there.

Thank you!

[alexedennis]

Another alternative that was recently launched by Ramen is ChartURL (https://charturl.com/). They make it very easy to generate personalized charts which can be embedded into emails, web/mobile apps, etc.It's very similar to Google Image Charts but uses C3.js and can handle more data via an api call. You should check it out!

[FGRibreau]

Sadly ChartURL was not a drop-in replacement for Google Image Charts API so Redsmin team built Image-Charts that is fully compatible with Google Image Charts API and even adds chart animation support (through gif)!

https://image-charts.com/chart?cht=bvs&chd=s:theresadifferencebetweenknowingthepathandwalkingthepath&chs=700x200&chxt=y&chf=b0,lg,90,4CA4F5,0.1,C371D3,0.8,EA469E,1&chtt=Hello%20Github!&chan=1300