

Ask HN: Does anyone find Google "search API" rate limiting annoying? - shail

I am feeling a lot of anger over Google's decision to rate limit searches done through APIs. Earlier it was free but there were some conditions such as you cannot change the order of the search etc.<p>But now, the same search is not free anymore and on top of thats its bloody expensive ($5 for 1000 queries).
Is there any alternative (I don't know why I am asking this question, I know the answer already. There are none.)
I personally feel that Google's data belongs to public as much as it belongs to Google. Its the public which has made it so valuable.<p>Obvisouly I do not see a problem if they charge for commercial usage but they should not restrict its usage for the opensource and freely distributed software. In fact such usage will only enrich the search data further.<p>Interesting links:
https://developers.google.com/web-search/docs/
https://developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/overview
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ig1
Obviously it will cost Google (or whoever else) money to provide such an API,
and without any revenue from it, what would be justification for providing
such a service ?

If Google's API is too expensive for you maybe you should consider the Bing
API (which is around $2/1000 queries). Alternatively if you want to roll your
own search you can access the Common Crawl on AWS and pay for the processing
cost directly.

~~~
shail
They can continue to put the same restriction that: 1) I cannot change the
search result order 2) I cannot remove the ads embedded in the result and need
to show the whole thing. That will provide the justification.

~~~
ig1
If that's an economically viable model, why not just insert your own ads and
use that to cover the cost of the API ?

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shail
I am trying to build a free software (open source), so I guess what you are
suggesting is another company in itself. For obvious reasons I cannot attempt
to do that while trying to build a utility tool. Where will I get ads from?
Google obviously. I will still have to pay for the margin. Search business
works on volume, I am not sure whether the tool will be that useful that it
will attract that kind of volume to get supported through ads. I think I am
not putting it correctly in words but its not possible to do what you're
suggesting.

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jyu
You could use several alternatives.

<http://help.blekko.com/index.php/does-blekko-have-an-api/>

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

<https://duckduckgo.com/api> (basically bing api but free)

~~~
greglindahl
Another alternative is the Yandex API.

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will_brown
In 2010 I developed a search engine using Google's API(Search 2.0?), after
launching I had to scrap the search engine and start over with Bing API
because queries accumulated over 300k the first 4 days. Contrary to another
poster who says Bing API now charges, at that time Bing's API was unlimited -
you may want to personally research Bing API queries limit.

Long term, be wary search API's have notoriously left developers high and dry
when releasing new versions. Old API versions get deprecated and are not
compatible with new versions, you need a new key API which requires coding
your engine from the beginning again.

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merinid
Yahoo's BOSS is a great alternative: <http://developer.yahoo.com/boss/search/>

It powers a good portion of the exciting search startup DuckDuckGo:
[http://help.duckduckgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216399-s...](http://help.duckduckgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216399-sources)

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bond
I was going to develop an app based on google search API but with those
restrictions it's impossible to do anything serious...

~~~
shail
Exactly, I think there are tons of innovation getting blocked because of this
restriction. I mean 100 queries a day, that's is ridiculously low to be able
to do even some proof of concept.

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pilooch
Other players, like blekko, may be more willing to open their API. Ask them
directly.

~~~
greglindahl
There are a bunch of free and open-source apps using blekko's search API. We
do ask that you keep free usage down below 1 query per second, and the free
API results are not as good as the ones on blekko.com or the izik tablet
search app, but you're free to rearrange the results and do other things that
you can't do with other search APIs. Contact us at apiauth@blekko.com for
details.

~~~
shail
Hey Greg,

Thanks for replying. The use case which I am considering requires instant like
search which google offers. I would like to speak to you 1-on-1 and see if you
could help me get such an access through blekko. I know its a huge technical
challenge to implement something like instant search and if blekko does not
already have it, but may be I could share my idea with you and see if there is
a possibility. My email id is in my profile. Please send me an email if you
are open to discuss further.

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jzox
There are some alternatives, but it really depends what you need it for?

