Google Deprecates Translation API

An anonymous reader writes "Google is to close down its popular Translate application programming interface — along with a host of others — by the end of the year, owing to what it claims is 'extensive abuse' by users of the service, but has thus far declined to provide details or a sensible alternative for users of the API."

Comments

Re:Abuse?

[Elf Sternberg]

SEO abuse is certainly one of them.

Google has been clamping down on low-quality aggregation sites, as we all know. One way to avoid looking like a low-quality aggregation site is to (a) create a vast farm of low-quality aggregation sites, (b) harvest high-quality articles from other sites, (c) run those articles through Google translate, (d) repost them to your farm. Because they don't look like the originals (being translations) they get around Google's "recognize repeat content" filters. Google uptakes them as original content.

Delicious has been filled with links to these in recent weeks, mostly because Delicious once had a decently high reputation as a site of quality linkage, and lots of people had trust in it.