

Yahoo BOSS API is no longer free - vaksel
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/11/yahoo-prepares-to-turn-on-the-meter-for-its-first-web-services-business/

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sh1mmer
This headline is typically misleading.

The first 10k requests a day are free. Previously it was 5k.

Once you pass that threshold (it's not _that_ low) it starts being charged
according to your use.

I'd love to hear feedback on what people think about this pricing model.
Please feel free to leave a comment here or email me croucher at yarrhoo dot
com (remove the pirate misspelling).

Edit: Whoops forgot the disclaimer. I work for Y!

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ptm
> The first 10k requests a day are free. Previously it was 5k.

The 5K limit you refer to is from the old Yahoo Search API, Yahoo Boss allowed
"unlimited queries".

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sh1mmer
My bad. :)

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jrnkntl
So what does this mean for duckduckgo.com ? They're based on the BOSS api and
I figure that by now they're passed the 10.000 requests a day.

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pclark
this was my first thought, too.

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uuilly
I think this is fantastic. I would way rather get charged a reasonable amount
for a useful service than have to wonder if it will be around in the future or
how they're making money off me.

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alexandros
The title editorialises needlessly, and incorrectly. The API remains free for
up to 10,000 queries a day. That is more than all the traffic the techcrunch
network makes, so it remains free for most everyone.

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bd
If I understand well, Techcrunch uses BOSS API only for custom search of their
sites. I would expect only a small fraction of their visitors search directly
from Techcrunch sites.

The change would affect significantly somebody who uses API as a part of their
primary function of the site [1], for example for some search mashup (like
various Cuil parodies or DuckDuckGo). For these, basically each page view
could be one (or more) API requests.

[1] <http://mashable.com/boss>

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Jasber
Yahoo! should have announced this as the plan from the start. Its awful hard
to give something away for free, then go back to charging for it. At the very
least, they should have grandfathered everyone in who was already using BOSS.

I understand the desire to charge for a service like this, but the way Yahoo!
handled this does not encourage me to use their services (I've used BOSS
extensively).

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sh1mmer
Yahoo! did say that there was a pricing model coming in the future for BOSS
from the start. I'm sorry you feel frustrated. I'd be interested to hear if
you have any ideas about how we could have communicated that better. It sucks
that you we flip-flopped.

Disclaimer: I work for Y!

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jdrock
I was wondering if anyone could break down the pricing plan for me. Talk about
needlessly complicated... Also, if any current BOSS users can comment on how
this will affect their operations, that would be awesome.

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sh1mmer
The exact breakdown is here.

<http://developer.yahoo.com/search/boss/fees.html>

There are two examples:

* Developer A submits 7000 API requests in a given day. Each API call requests search results 1-10. Since 1000 requests of this type cost 3 units (for a total of 21 units) and each developer gets 30 units per day for free, Developer A is not charged anything.

* Developer B also submits 7000 API requests. Each API call requests results 1-100. Since 1000 requests of this type cost 10 units (for a total of 70 units) and each developer gets 30 units per day for free, Developer B will be charged for 40 units (70 - 30 = 40). The price of 40 units is $4.00 (40 x $0.10 = $4.00).

It's also worth noting that pricing is in units of 1000 requests however we
will charge per request, it's just not worth quoting prices for units smaller
than 1000.

Disclaimer: I work for Y!

