Google Shutting Out Tool Developers with API Removal

Wednesday, December 20th, 2006;
-- Andy Beal |

You may not have heard but Google has closed their Google Search SOAP API and replaced it with a new Google Ajax Search API.

What’s the big deal? The new API doesn’t easily allow third-party tool developers to utilize Google search results. So why in the world would Google take such a backward step? One reason, the new API allows them to better control how developers use Google’s search results.

Existing users of the API will still be supported.

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4 Responses to “Google Shutting Out Tool Developers with API Removal”

  1. Collin Winter Says:

    In response to Google’s discontinuation of their SOAP API, some of our developers at work coded up a solution: a SOAP gateway that allows applications that use the API to continue working. It works by translating SOAP calls into requests to Google’s web interface, scraping the results, then packaging the data back into SOAP. We’ve released all the code at http://evilapi.com under an MIT license.

  2. Barry Schwartz Says:

    Monday, early afternoon…

    http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/006996.html

  3. Andy Beal Says:

    Thanks Colin.

    Barry, I know I’m a little late, Michael Jensen brought it to my attention last week, I only just got round to mentioning it. ;-)

  4. Barry Schwartz Says:

    Just saw so many “news sites” talk about it a day after…

    You know how it is…

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