O’Reilly Radar: Google Deprecates Their SOAP Search API
They don’t switch it off yet, but there will be no more support, no more bugfixes, and no more new API keys.
As a user of the SOAP API (I use it to, uh, automate the tedious task of egosurfing), I think this is a real bummer. Google says we should use their AJAX search API instead, but like all AJAXy offerings, it is nice for front-end integration but useless for server-side stuff and scripting.
I wonder what this means. Apparently the expected business value of such an API didn’t materialize for Google. And the web services community loses their poster child example. Some people seem to think this spells the end of SOAP, which I think is nuts — the fact that the API uses SOAP certainly didn’t have anything to do with Google’s decision.
On the bright side, this means my next toy project that needs a search service will use a REST-based offering.
I think David Megginson is right-on