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Google Pulls Access To Unsupported But Popular Weather API

Posted by Unknown on from the we-did-it-because-we-love-you dept.

New submitter drsmack1 writes with news of some bummed out programmers losing access to an undocumented Google API. From the article: "The curious popularity of the Google Weather API appears to be coming to a close. The search giant never officially supported the feature, but developers have used the unofficial feed available from the iGoogle homepage. With iGoogle now set for deprecation in November, developers are reporting that the once simple weather API is no longer returning data." Seems like the sort of thing you could replace with a tiny bit of XSLT.

8 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Any alternative? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Sure: http://www.wunderground.com/weather/api/

  2. Re:I wish Google would have warned us... by Zapotek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Going the extra mile and notifying the users would have undoubtedly made a good impression but this situation resembles someone grepping a website for QOTDs and then complaining that his regexp no longer works because the site's HTML code changed or the quotes were removed altogether. Bottom line is, tough luck. When something is not supported then it's not supported, how much clearer can you get?

  3. Wait, you're using an unsupported API... by ducomputergeek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And then complaining when said API disappears? For the US at least NOAA offers a pretty nice REST/XML API that's free and even comes with icons you can link to if building a webpage or app.

    --
    "The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
    1. Re:Wait, you're using an unsupported API... by fm6 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Well, yeah, there are plenty of alternatives. Just now I went to my igoogle page to see if the weather widget was still working. It was — because I use the NOAA widget, not Google's own widget.

      But you know, my igoogle page is going away in about a year. I can certainly live without it (I don't really need to a weather report and the Wikipedia Picture of the Day every time I open a browser tab, and now my daily agenda is also on my phone) but it's part of a trend that I'm really getting tired of. They invent some clever new application, then they get bored with it and pull it. They publish an intriguing new API, then they get bored with it and shut it off. The acquire some interesting new company, get bored with it and shut it down. And so on, over and over. Once or twice is a minor nuisance, but they do it constantly.

      Even when they stick with an application for the long haul, they take forever to get it out of beta mode, they tend to skimp on the boring little details that make for mature software (I mean you, Postini! And you Android Emulator!), and they never get round to providing proper documentation or tech support.

      I've said it before: I love Google for their creativity and their striving to create lots of cool products. But I wish to fuck they'd grow up already.

  4. 2013 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    With iGoogle now set for deprecation in November

    That's November 2013.

  5. Re:Any alternative? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Beliving in global warming doesn't automatically make you a "fanatic." Stop being an asshole.

  6. Lies! by tweir · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There is no such thing as "a tiny bit of XSLT".

  7. Re:Any alternative? by FitForTheSun · · Score: 5, Informative

    I can explain what happened.

    I work for Weather Central in Madison, Wisconsin. In December we were purchased by the famously rich Rothschilds of Europe and they brought in a charismatic new superstar CEO. Seven months later, they cashed out to the tune of +$15 million, selling to our historical nemesis and competitor, Weather Services International.

    WSI is owned by The Weather Channel Companies, which is an umbrella company for The Weather Channel (duh) as well as Weather Underground, which they recently bought. (TWCC is owned by NBC Universal, which is owned by Bain Capital and Blackstone Group. That means I now work for Mitt Romney.)

    This consolidation is complete. Over 90% of the worldwide weather services business is now owned by TWCC, which used that considerable power to negotiate a contract with Google. The contract stipulates that TWCC (and their sub-companies) will provide data to Google, and in turn Google would eliminate its weather API, because TWCC has its own weather APIs (more than one of them now, in fact). The API at my company is cleverly named DataCloud: http://datacloud.wxc.com/?vs=0.9.

    This consolidation is definitely good for TWCC, which will never again have to worry about competing in the marketplace. The monopoly will last until a disruptive technology displaces it in a couple decades, if it's anything like other stale monopolies. Unfortunately, it is definitely bad for the other 7.01 billion people on the planet, who now only have one source for weather data.