
Google Announces APIs Scheduled for Shutdown - jot
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_announces_apis_scheduled_for_shutdown.php
======
bane
There seems to be at least one lesson here for developers relying on Google's
good will.

Take your pick:

a) Don't rely on Google to keep services around forever

b) Ain't no such thing as a free lunch

c) Google has only one true product, and it's advertising

d) <feel free to add more>

Despite extraordinary profits, Google is really starting to tighten the
reigns. I'm guessing that speaks to a feeling of market saturation. They may
no longer be on a breakneck growth curve like in the old days.

~~~
stock_toaster
> c) Google has only one true product, and it's advertising

I would argue that Google's one true product is _you_ (the user, and data
about that user). Advertising is simply their primary (currently?) means to
sell that product (you) to other companies/businesses.

~~~
gcb
With adsense they can still sell ads even if they do not have 'you'.

... only guessing of course. have no idea if gmail makes more with ads than
the whole of adsense.

~~~
stock_toaster
You make a good point.

I imagine (very much a guess on my part) that Google would prefer to have
eyeballs on their own impressions of adsense than those on other sites though
-- because there would be no payout in those cases.

Still, I would think that serving ad impressions on 3rd party sites is likely
a large part of their current business. Maybe those are just eyeballs they
rent as appose to own then. ;)

------
thegrossman
My coworker and I spent the last several months building an iPad app on top of
the News Search API. And now all that work is for naught! That is a serious
bummer.

~~~
shafqat
You can use the NewsCred API (developer.newscred.com) if you want. We'll make
it free forever if you email me.

------
iqster
This make me think about something Fred Wilson said at TC Disrupt ...

Don’t be a Google Bitch, don’t be a Facebook Bitch, and don’t be a Twitter
Bitch. Be your own Bitch. (link: [http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/23/fred-
wilson-be-your-own-bit...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/23/fred-wilson-be-
your-own-bitch/))

I've spent the last few days trying to use the terribly documented (and
frequently changing) Facebook API ... and I wonder, why am I putting myself
through this abuse? FB is not unique here ... Twitter's APIs are pretty flakey
too in terms of how often they fail. It made me realize that my objectives and
that of my API's provider are clearly not the same.

I love APIs but I'm tired of getting beaten up by them. </rant>

~~~
adriand
Perhaps there's a SaaS opportunity to build an intermediary API for these
other services. It would present a single, sensible, unified API to
developers, and would negotiate all of the crappy APIs of other services on
the other side.

Facebook changes their API? No problem, API Intermediary simply updates its
Facebook API calls once, maintaining the same developer-facing API as before.
Google Translate gets deprecated? No problem, API Intermediary just switches
translation providers to Microsoft.

Of course this would be a ton of work to build and maintain, but therein lies
the value to others. Because of that, it probably couldn't be free (who would
want that headache for nothing?) and it would probably not always offer the
full range of capabilities that direct API access would, but it may still be
profitable.

~~~
rratkows
I believe there is an opportunity.

I believe the biggest hurdle with Enterprise adoption of SaaS is data
integration and effectively all SaaS vendors combined are building the tower
of babel. We are a SaaS company, we only use SaaS products and we probably
have about 15 of them. Some of them integrate because they partner with
NetSuite, other are stand alone and that is OK for now but for true Business
Intelligence we need them to integrate. Infomatica is doing a booming
business, inpart to the SaaS demands.

~~~
iqster
Interesting... what functionality does Netsuite offer? Sorry ...noob question
:p

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simonw
They're shutting down the translate API? I hope they're releasing a
replacement - it's incredibly powerful, though I can't see how it commercially
benefits them.

~~~
jot
That one surprised me the most. Message at
<http://code.google.com/apis/language/translate/overview.html>:

 _"The Google Translate API has been officially deprecated as of May 26, 2011.
Due to the substantial economic burden caused by extensive abuse, the number
of requests you may make per day will be limited and the API will be shut off
completely on December 1, 2011. For website translations, we encourage you to
use the Google Translate Element."_

Surely "abuse" means they built something people want. Sad that they don't
seem to think it would be worth their while to charge for it.

~~~
skymt
Perhaps "abuse" means toys like this: <http://www.translationparty.com/>

~~~
po
That's not abuse... they could easily have blocked a single website. I'm
thinking it would have to be spammers using google translate to generate
content or something.

------
woodall
The only API's I've used, that are being shut down, are the Translation and
Image Search. I had a little app that looked up the original word and
translated word then displayed images; that way I had a better reference to
what that word meant(Rosetta Stone). It was just a toy, but I'm sad to see it
go!

------
sc68cal
Shutting down the Wave API seems to be the final nail in the coffin since they
decided to discontinue Google Wave, in August of last year.

[http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/update-on-google-
wave...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/update-on-google-wave.html)

------
paulmwatson1
That is a bummer. I guess the question is; what are the alternatives for the
translate API?

~~~
chip
Microsoft's translator api -<http://www.microsofttranslator.com/dev/>

