
Google Spell goes down and no one notices - brokentone
http://www.brokentone.com/blog/2566/
======
smackfu
Read the article carefully. This was a non-Google plug-in using a private
Google API that was then shutdown when Google stopped using it. This impacted
users of the plug-in. This has nothing to do with Google, really.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
What I took from the article is that it was a bad idea for the API client to
let errors pass over in silence.

~~~
chickopozo
They used a hacky method from the old IE Toolbar. That's like me scraping a
website and blaming them when they change it.

------
knowledgesale
A basic spellchecker is extremely simple to implement:

<http://norvig.com/spell-correct.html>

An instance with a similar code could be run, say, at Heroku (it would even be
for free for the low traffic) with, say, a Flask wrapper:

<http://flask-restful.readthedocs.org/en/latest/api.html>

If the output format is reproduced, all it would take is changing the
reference url.

~~~
bru
>A basic spellchecker is extremely simple to implement

That reminds me of this article: <http://prog21.dadgum.com/29.html> "A
Spellchecker Used to Be a Major Feat of Software Engineering"

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Every time I read a norvig article I can feel myself get a little bit cleverer

Edit: And dumber, until I work through the examples twice

NB Chrome's spell checker has an edit distance of one. I learnt something
useful and immediately applicable from norvig - I tell you this guy is great
:-)

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pmorici
Maybe no one noticed because browsers have spell checking built in now?

~~~
joekrill
Would this even apply to something like TinyMCE? I thought (read:assumed) the
in-browser spell checking only worked against textarea's and text inputs.

~~~
Valien
We use TinyMCE and a .NET plugin that uses the GoogleSpell check service. It's
dead right now and we are trying to find a solve for it.

~~~
passionfruit
I decided to use Yandex Speller since at the time I was researching this issue
it was clear that Google Spell was an undocumented and unsupported feature.
<http://api.yandex.ru/speller/>

------
brokentone
This blew up while I was away, sweet!

So there are a few takaways. All WP and other TinyMCE spellcheckers are
silently erroring now. Not cool.

In general, people should properly handle errors, and not rely on non-public
APIs.

~~~
IheartApplesDix
so many people use ajax.googleapis.com it's ridiculous. Most the time when you
block this, the page fails to load at all. That's fine though because they
often don't have content that interests me anyway if they're that type of dev
on the web.

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espinchi
Well the users of our Spell Checker app for Android did notice.

Sure, we know it's entirely our fault for using a non-public API.

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tcwc
This was just a private API that presumably Google no longer uses.

I wonder if this is related to the new Chrome spelling suggest feature
(<http://mashable.com/2013/03/29/chrome-spell-check/>), and if that means
there's a new private undocumented API for people to play with.

------
donohoe
Well, just tried Wordpress VIP spell-checker and it works just fine.

If they were relying on this feature they've fixed it on their side.

------
paul_f
We use Google spellchecker with TinyMCE in our app (salestrakr.com) and it is
currently working just fine. If it was down, it was for a short period of
time. Though apparently long enough for someone to write a blog post, come up
with a funny title, and get it on HN.

------
Cushman
Actually, I have been noticing some false positives in Chrome on Windows in
the last few weeks... I wonder if it could be related somehow.

Hm, I don't seem to have online spellcheck enabled though. Perhaps not.

------
swinglock
Spell-checking these days is and should be a function of the browser.

~~~
aeonsky
More bloated software, yeeeey!!

~~~
ConstantineXVI
I'll take the software bloat over the network bloat from the extra requests
sending every keystroke over the wire.

------
jpswade
This reminds of what happened with the (unofficial) Google Weather API.

People should really disclose what APIs they use and offer alternatives should
the first go down, especially when it's unofficial.

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marknutter
Google what now?

~~~
campuscodi
Nothing.... He just wanted another backlash against Google policies. But
nobody cares about Google fartsy products anymore after we all gave up Google
for good sine closing down Reader... right? or am I the only one that stuck to
that method of protest :)))))

------
ommunist
This is the plan. And in the end They will switch off Google and this is what
St. John saw as Apocalypse.

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ck2
I think I can see the next product headed for the graveyard?

~~~
Mahn
As soon as Google realizes they still have it online, probably. I'd be willing
to bet the reason it's still alive is that they plain and simply forgot about
it.

~~~
knappe
Right, because a highly used endpoint with, presumably given it's widespread
usage, millions of requests is easily forgotten.

~~~
kalleboo
In a company the size of Google, I could easily see that happening

------
segmondy
lesson people should learn, stop building your business around FREE/PUBLIC
APIs. If you are not paying for it, don't use it for your product.

~~~
packetslave
no, the lesson people should learn is "stop building your business around
UNPUBLISHED/PRIVATE APIs." If you do, you have no excuse for complaining when
they go away.

------
dasil003
Well... someone noticed.

