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Google Releases an API for Their Database
Ben Wills writes "Yahoo! announced that Google Released an API last Thursday.
"The service, launched Thursday, is called Google Web APIs, for application programming interfaces. The tools let noncommercial software developers "query more than 2 billion Web documents directly from their own computer programs," according to Google's Web site. For now, the service is free."
Google just keeps pushing the limits."
I try not to give Yahoo any more hits after they messed up their privacy poolicy, so here's the same exact story on CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-882252.html.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
:wq
The world can now be revolutionized! We can get Google searches on Microsoft.com! The pigeons will come out of their cages and peck the buttons on the Microsoft servers, thus shutting down the evil megacorporation! Hail Google for saving the world! The pigeons will save us all, hail the open API!
Now we can sort strings in order of google hits!
Wow, very nice for word completion
DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
PsPrEditor writes: "Yahoo announced that Slashdot Released an API last Monday. "The service, launched Monday, is called SlashPI. It will allow users to remove duplicate stories that have been plaguing /. for the past year. ""
Come play Heroes of Might and Magic Mini online.
Can it be used to query for Slashdot stories on the Google API?
Why do I get the feeling that Google is doing this to save bandwidth? How many people do you thing scrape Google for results? How much load are they going to save if people use the API rather than searching and scraping? That's what I thought...
What is your Slash Rating?
An interesting article on K5
5
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/4/15/72154/506
talks about how now Google bombing is even more effective with this release.
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
It's amazing to see the advances in what appears (to the non-programmer) to be a set of simple technologies coming out of little ol' Google. They're putting all the other search engines to shame, esp. including Yahoo!. Even Yahoo! is stealing ideas from Google, such as the really cool Zeitgeist.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Dont forget that Google released their API for their database...
Am I one of the only people that contend that THIS is what the whole 'web services' thing is all about?
I think this is ultra cool. Imagine, if you made an application that had skins or used plugins, or whatever. You could have an in-app browser, powered by google, to search for new add-ons to applications, etc.
Actually, the possibilities are quite cool.
"Old man yells at systemd"
But they need to keep the volume up to justify the subscription model. When it doubt, start looking for crap in the trash can.
I wonder how hard it would be to trawl the cache for the good stuff?
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
Any real hacker already has perl/cgi/whatever code to do this for him :)
Apart from that I think it is a pity that noone comes up with a Corba-over-HTTP standard. As an API, Corba IDL is nicer and more compact than WSDL, and all tool support is already there. WSDL offers no advantages over Corba. The only difference is the use of XML instead of (easy) IDL, and using HTTP as transport mechanism. Corba is transport mechanism independant; current implementations mostly use IIOP, but one could just as well implement Corba using HTTP as transport. Hell, you could even use some XML-over-HTTP as transport, to satisfy all XML freaks that think any machine-to-machine data nowadays should be human readable.
The only justification for XML web services is that MSFT hates Corba (because of their Not Invented Here syndrome they invented COM+ to compete, also helping vendor lock in) thus they had to come up with something else; switching to Corba would mean they loose their face.
Already see this on Friday? It was released thursday, so it possibly couldn't be a different story...
Google releases Web APIs
Am I a hipster-doofus?
I'm glad the army of highly-trained rodents that processes Slashdot submissions was able to catch these reduntant stories. We've seen this a few times before:
The first story even included a link to the API page on Google's site.
Damn! I wrote my own about two months ago.
Maybe I'll grab theirs and see if it gives me any ideas.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Google xml-rpc interface
I personally refuse to support and or recommend anyone using SOAP web services due to the patent fiasco. I asked on the xml-rpc list if anyone knew of a xml-rpc gateway and Dave Winer immediately jumped to the challange and put up a public gateway.
Thanx Dave
Got Code?
The database obviously has a list of "related links". Both the original "article" and this dup have the same link, to http://www.google.com/apis/. Why not just list all the other "articles" which contain that same "related link" in the last 2 weeks or so when the "editor" (and I use that term very loosely) submits the "article" (which I also use very loosely).
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
How long until slashdot offers this service? (No, I don't mean just the headlines, I mean the whole site).
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
That's not what Web Services are about.
Although current applications (and some implementations) focus on RPC-over-HTTP-using-XML (and "section 5" encoding), most of the big WS vendors believe the real meat of WS is in literal-encoded documents in long-lived message exchanges.
This buys you a lot; instead of needing to have objects at both ends, you send messages that are described by a schema; the implementations are relatively independent. WS are more flexible, more loosely coupled, and more dynamic.
In this manner, WS is closer to message queuing solutions (e.g., MQSeries, MSMQ, Tibco, etc.) than it is to Corba.
The intermediary model in SOAP hasn't been exploited much yet, but should prove interesting.
Another interesting feature of SOAP is the extensibility that Modules bring you; this should allow a number of common behaviours (like reliable delivery) to be standardized.
Finally, SOAP isn't just over HTTP; again, many vendors believe that HTTP is too limiting and tempermental to be useful for the more interesting applications.
I was about to submit this story:
Slashdot is reporting that Google is opening their API. Slashdot's Hemos was unable to be reached for a reply, but Slashdot's CmdrTaco decided to post the story anyway.
:)
I just believe they're doing it for a reason that makes business sense to them rather than out of the "this is a really great technical idea" motivation. (Hence the cynical tone) I agree that it would be good if there were some sort of standard API available (like RSS does) that allowed you to do this sort of thing for all sites. Then again...(cynicism=on) Microsoft would just find another way to corrupt the standard.
What is your Slash Rating?
How do you figure Google has some strong Open Source relationship? Have they given out their source code so that people could create their own Googles? Serious question, maybe they have and I just didn't know about it.
And how would an API such as this "easily muscle out any sniff of a competition from other search engine wannabes"? I don't think too many other guys are going to be rushing out to implement this, seeing as every time someone uses the API, they're not seeing the ads. People stop seeing the ads, advertisers stop giving Google money. Google stops getting money, Google go bye bye. Google's already unsure how they can make money from this as it is, I wouldn't expect everyone else to make the blind jump along with them.
Microsoft has offered TerraServer access as a web service for over a year now. You can still see the current incarnation at TerraService.net. As I said, it's been around for over a year now, because I still see cached articles about it from last April. Nice try, though. ;)
But I was taking the controversial (around here) approach that a business was trying to make money versus the (conventional, around here) approach that they were doing new things for technology's sake. I suppose I could get really wild and suggest that they were doing this to get people hooked and then would set the hook by making it a subscription service, but that's pure speculation.
What is your Slash Rating?
That's a cool idea. And that's a great page! I was surprised to see that Mac users search on Google four times as much as do Linux users. I guess I have a warped perception of the number of Linux users...
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Why would Microsoft be pissed?
It's simple... Take VS.Net and build a client application to utilize the google.com web service.
Now do the same with Java.
It only takes 10 minutes or so to build the entire client UI in VS.Net. How long will it take the Java developer? *That* is what Microsoft is selling...
google shows you don't need .NET but can just as well use Java to make use of XML web services
Of course anybody who has any background knowledge of web services knows that pretty much any language with text manipulation can be used to create web services. The point of .NET is not that it is the only way of creating web services but rather it makes creating them a lot easier; WSDL, DISCO, SOAP, etc. are abstracted away to make the developing web services easier. Yon don't need to know the bare protocol to start coding (of course it always helps).
WSDL offers no advantages over Corba. The only difference is the use of XML...
The use of XML is an advantage. XML is easy to use, and is an open standard. Although binary specs are slightly more efficient in transfer time and space requirements, this is becoming more and more negligible. More important is a developer's time. It is a lot easier to use and debug and text-based spec like XML than a binary spec.
The only justification for XML web services is that MSFT hates Corba
Maybe before you spout worthless anti-msft drivel you should research the origins of Web Services. Check out this article by Tim Berners-Lee for a quick intro.
hghWhile I'm sure that Google's interpretation will be very reasonable, I don't really like the license text.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
How long will it take the Java developer?
About five minutes, using the Java classes that Google included with their API. RTFM, man.
The nice thing is that it's more a push of pure Soap than .Net. You could use Java, Perl, Ruby, or really anything against the Soap interface (as long as you have a soap library to wrap up the calls, or are willing to create a wrapper).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
As this is an example of a feedback loop, rather than the sort of coordinated manipulation that a GoogleBomb is, I felt it deserved it's own term, so I decided to call it GoogleThrashing since this could at least potentially cause the Google Pagerank algorithm to thrash, depending on the extent and type of feedback involved.
:-)
Besides, it sounds cool
I posted a short description of GoogleThrashing to my weblog and also posted it to the Google API discussion group.
The real Webmaven is user ID 27463. I don't rate an imposter, because my ID is such a lame-ass high number.
He's talking about building the UI, which is incredibly easy in VB, using the GUI builder. The API is easy to use with either language.
Not really.. All Google's API does is generate the right XML for you, which you could do yourself with a third party XML library or an hour's hacking. They are using completely off-the-shelf components - SAX to do the XML, and Apache's SOAP library for Java.
Yeah but if you use J#.Net.... :)
Web Service are intended to be used to charge people for using.
I'm sure your local drug dealing will give out some free samples to hook the kids.....
Think about it....There have been some recent article regarding MS and IBM "patenting"
the internet via web services....