Google image charts API not working anymore

[chenejac]

Describe the bug
This bug has been reported by Michael Munday:

Anyone using sparkline charts and facing issues with the google Image charts API?https://github.com/vivo-project/VIVO/blob/main/webapp/src/main/webapp/templates/fr[…]ker/visualization/coauthorship/coAuthorshipSparklineContent.ftl
We noticed intermittent issues with our Google Image Charts that we load on individual author pages and in other visualizations we have available for our authors starting last week.
When we investigated, we found that the Google API these depend on is being formally decommissioned, and the outages were a result of the Google team beginning rolling blackouts to flush out any remaining users from the platform to something newer. We pull the charts in from Public VIVO when we build, and were hoping to get some direction on if the Dev team is planning to replace the charts anytime soon with something new, or what they may recommend as a stopgap. Thank you for the insights!

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Run VIVO
2. Open an individual researcher page
3. Check whether QR code can be visualized
4. Check whether Publications in VIVO image can be visualized

Environment (please complete the following information):

• OS: [Windows]
• Browser [chrome]
• Tomcat version [9]
• VIVO version [1.14.1-SNAPSHOT, main branch]
• Apache Solr

Additional context
Add any other context about the problem here.