

Google Shopping API closes next week: do you have an alternative? - vinothgopi
http://gigaom.com/2013/09/13/google-shopping-api-closes-next-week-do-you-have-an-alternative/

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icanberk
Semantics 3 seems to be the only good solution out there.

~~~
lnanek2
I've been talking with Semantics3 about using their API to give more results
in a Google Glass shopping comparison hack I did recently:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6f9fh6vq6zs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6f9fh6vq6zs)

It does look good and they've been very responsive. Some other APIs I've seen,
though: [http://www.scandit.com/](http://www.scandit.com/)
[http://www.simpleupc.com/](http://www.simpleupc.com/)
[https://developer.getinvisiblehand.com/](https://developer.getinvisiblehand.com/)
[http://prosperent.com/](http://prosperent.com/)
[http://www.retailigence.com/](http://www.retailigence.com/)

Some other APIs I've used are ShopSense (
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwlABP0z_ms](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwlABP0z_ms)
) and Gilt (
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYprO-9rrmQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYprO-9rrmQ)
), although those are fashion and home. Others have mentioned using the Sears
API.

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machbio
I guess, we should not believe google anymore.. I had built this little
website that uses google's shopping api -
[http://www.shoop.in/](http://www.shoop.in/) .. All effort wasted, I should
have seen what was coming..

~~~
notatoad
What do you mean, you shouldn't believe google? they said they were going to
shut it down, and they're shutting it down. you can believe that.

if you mean you shouldn't trust google to maintain APIs forever, then yes. of
course you shouldn't. you shouldn't build any product entirely on top of an
API you don't have an SLA and lifespan guarantee for. doing so is
irresponsible and unfair to your users, and when a free and un-promised API
shuts down and breaks your product, you have nobody to blame but yourself.

~~~
machbio
As an Individual Developer - i cant be building the whole backend.. anyways
the Gigaom article talks about the alternatives who are for profit.. will
likely be trying them

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agotterer
Similar to InvisibleHand is a browser extension I built called PriceAdvance
([http://www.priceadvance.com](http://www.priceadvance.com)). We have a
browser addon for FF and chrome which does realtime price comparison of the
products you're browsing and offers coupons.

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zengr
We expected this. We were building our product catalog over time and wrote our
own elasticsearch based search.

The prices are updated daily and we don't do product availability.

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Pxtl
Google shopping always seemed nice but I'm not sad to see it go because I'm in
Canada and nobody wants my business.

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anuraj
Do not use Google APIs to support core functionality in your products. Google
has no conscience. Don't expect mercy.

~~~
lazyjones
If I were Google (or Twitter), I'd be satisfied with the competition-killing
effects of publishing open APIs and shutting them down after a while, to the
point of considering this an interesting defensive tactic. So much creative
energy just dissipates instead of going into some possibly dangerous competing
product...

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coldcode
Tell me if there are any weeks where some promise Google made doesn't go bust.

~~~
eli
To be fair, they announced the closing as part of the big "spring cleaning"
post back in March. It's just now it's actually happening.

