[okfn-discuss] Striking confirmation from Google of the problems with 'open' APIs

Wed Dec 20 14:03:09 UTC 2006

I'm sure others have seen this but as of December 5th 2006 Google 
stopped issuing API keys for their SOAP search API:

   http://code.google.com/apis/soapsearch/

They appear to want to move people to their ajax service which provides 
*much* less freedom for the client to process and manipulate the data 
(in fact it appears it is very hard to get at the *data* any more -- 
rather similar to the google maps api which just allows you to render 
over layers provided by google not to actually extract the underlying 
geodata). As one user commented[1]:

 > I read the shift as being one that discourages the development of any
 > server based value add over google search and encourages the
 > development of browser based value add to google search.
 >
 > To me this is a severe restriction on the types of value one can build
 > - but then maybe that is the intent here - google wants less
 > competition  ...

This seems to be a perfect confirmation of all of the problems of 'open' 
apis that were discussed here back in the Summer and were documented in:

   http://blog.okfn.org/2006/09/04/open-apis-dont-equal-open-knowledge/

Regards,

Rufus

[1]:http://groups.google.com/group/google.public.web-apis/browse_thread/thread/60e1cf592a9c1410/a5c69859ccadff4d?lnk=raot