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Google Releases Web APIs
skunkeh writes "Google have released the first beta of their Web APIs package. Used in conjunction with a free license key this SOAP based web service allows developers to execute up to 1000 automated queries a day, but is currently available for non-commercial use only. The download comes with Java and .NET code examples and includes a WSDL description for use with other SOAP supporting languages." There's also a write up about uses on Userland.
Other than being a really cool idea, this is a great tactical move from Google. On the one hand, by restricting the number of queries made to Google, they ensure that their APIs aren't misused/compromised, it also gives companies an initiative to purchase Google products and deploy this API (probably an unrestricted-query API) on their own network. Furthermore, an API such as this will easily muscle out any sniff of a competition from other search engine wannabes. Google has managed to do all this and yet be as compliant
to an Open Source initiative as possible. Remarkable.
DOH. And I hit submit before the good part:
Your program must include your license key with each query you submit to the Google Web APIs service.
Whilst the potential of a regular Google search is large enough, when you consider the Google search modifiers, the potential becomes staggering. Imagine using the following features:
Does anyone happen to know if you can use the other sections of Google (e.g. news, images etc.)?
Is Google the best company ever or what?!
If they are going to limit you to only 1000 queries, I fail to see the point. It wouldn't be hard at all to write a simple API on your own to, say, a c++ class that spits out the necessary url's [like http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=example]
or the like, dispatch them to google port 80, and then parse the results into easily program readable data sets/results? A third party could write this sort of thing easily enough if there was demand for it. I mean, esentially the google search API isn't going to be offering anything not available in the standard forms, is it? Except their spell checker, I believe. [Which you could use via html too, actually, "Did you mean: ______" ]
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the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
It's not something you have to go to google for, but it'd be nice
ummm... yeah... that's partly how they do their whole weighting thing to determine hot websites for search criteria.. without that in place, you'd have to search through tons of crap to find what you want.. I regularly use the "I feel lucky" button on google, because their algorithms manage to pull up what i'm looking for first hit..
Ummmmm. Ok, check this out.
/. we have an article about Google releasing their SOAP 1.1 API followed immediately by an article from a guy that set up a spambot trap on his web site, and in the margin a poll about giving spammers what they deserve. Putting 2 and 2 and 2 together, I got 4, popped open a google box and started playing.
This morning on
All I did was ask google to search for "mailto" and "@msn.com" and lo and behold, she spit back 111,000 hits - hits that contain what look like legit email addresses IN THE THREE LINE SUMMARIES.
The point is, now that google can be automated, what's to stop spammers from SOAPing their way into Google to do their harvesting? Would there be any point over what they're doing now? It might be cheaper, because you only have to run over the google results not the whole sites and since Google caches pages, you can even grab addresses from the past, somewhat.
IT ALSO DEFEATS SPAMBOT TRAPS.
Doesn't this give spammers whole new avenues to exploit?
Worse, are webmasters going to have to put a halt to Google crawls?
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