
Google API Explorer - tzury
https://developers.google.com/apis-explorer/#p/
======
jgunsch
Hey, eng lead here for the APIs Explorer. Despite the site's ancient
appearance, we're not killing it, and have some plans in the works. (You can
see some of the work we've been doing on developers.google.com, with "Try this
API" on the right [1]).

Feedback I'm interested in: What do you use the APIs Explorer for? What
features would you like to see?

[1] [https://developers.google.com/google-
apps/calendar/v3/refere...](https://developers.google.com/google-
apps/calendar/v3/reference/calendarList/list)

~~~
erichurkman
> ancient appearance

You mean usable and fast without needless animation like everything in
material design?

~~~
derefr
You say "without needless animation"; I say "makes me, as someone with a
sensory integration disorder, able to refocus my eyes to the new text more
quickly." (And then someone else says "makes me, as someone with the _other_
kind of sensory integration disorder, overwhelmed and distracted and so
hinders my fluency.")

Accessibility is not a scalar; some people need things that other people
don't; some things X people need hurt Y people, and vice-versa. The animations
might not help _you_ , but they help _someone_.

~~~
ben_jones
Then we should give users a choice some how? You'd think this could be a
solved issue ~20 years in.

~~~
derefr
If the animation were done in pure CSS, UA stylesheets could suppress it
handily.

~~~
mateuszf
Suggestion to improve the UX for some users by having them write CSS
stylesheets? Count me it ;).

Nothing personal, but this sounded a bit surreal to me.

~~~
derefr
"UA stylesheets" is sort of an intermediary format these days; you don't write
them yourself, you use a browser or browser extension or a piece of native
accessibility software that generates them for you in response to your
described needs.

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cdancette
They should add one column to display the expected time before they kill the
service

~~~
tpush
Can we just ban pointless snark like this? No matter if it's directed at
Google or Apple or whatever.

It just has no substance and is tiresome to read over and over again.

~~~
cdancette
You're right actually, but I still think they could add some indications about
the support time of a service. Like some guarantee that the service will be
around for at least 3/5 years. Not necessarily in this API explorer, but for
all their products.

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ImJasonH
Hey! I made this in ~2012 (2011?) or so, and it's still one of my greatest
accomplishments. Glad people still use and like it. :-)

~~~
nickthemagicman
Thanks JasonH!

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pmontra
I used API Explorer to learn the API of a GApp I had to integrate in a
customer's web app. It's OK but I wished for a couple of improvements:

1) I failed to notice some errors and messages because they appeared below the
fold and nothing close to the submit button hinted me that something happened.
Furthermore having to scroll up and down to type and to check the results is
far from optimal.

2) It should at least nudge the API developers to write documentation and make
it appear in the page. I was left too many times wondering what the attribute
names picked by the developers were meant. They eventually sent me a Google
Doc. Compare this to Swagger's in page hints and examples.

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zokeia
Can you really trust any of these to exist long-term?

~~~
ben_jones
You can probably group them into two categories: APIs that Google makes money
from, and those they don't. The former probably will stick around, especially
the ones having to do with Ads.

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faze
And why would I put in time learning these APIs if I have no guarantees they
will continue existing?

~~~
jeffcore
That's pretty much true of any service you don't control.

~~~
cdancette
That's more true for Google since very few of its product are actually making
money. Everything comes from advertising, which comes mainly from Google
search. This they have no real incentive to keep any product that doesn't
display ads.

A solution could be to let the users pay a little money for google services
(and avoid tracking / use of its data for advertising? )

~~~
kyrra
Google's "other revenue"[0] for Q3 was $3.4 billion of the $27 billion it made
that quarter. Other revenue is mainly Play, Cloud, and Hardware. So I'd say
Google is making a lot of money from other avenues.

[0]
[https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204417...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204417000042/goog10-qq32017.htm)

~~~
faze
Google is the master of leeching and rent-seeking.

Just as they pit advertisers against each other to drive up prices for
impressions on third party sites, for which they keep a large middelman fee,
they use the same tactics on Google Play. Developers get to bid on the #1
search result spot, while Google is milking them for 30% of gross revenue for
providing a rather abysmal ZIP file download service. They are only able to
charge such high fees because of the exclusivity and network effects from
being pre-installed on every GMS Android phone.

Other examples of similar rent-seeking platforms are Apple App Store, Windows
Store, Steam.

