Yahoo API Updates - BOSS no longer free, WebSearch gone, changes to geo APIs | Hacker News Reader

Yahoo API Updates - BOSS no longer free, WebSearch gone, changes to geo APIs

developer.yahoo.net

55 pointssimonw29 comments

"We are exploring a potential fee-based structure as well as ad-revenue models that will enable BOSS developers to monetize their offerings. When we roll out these changes, BOSS will no longer be a free service to developers."

Seems fair enough to me, depending on how the pricing looks. This will affect DuckDuckGo which I believe is built on top of BOSS.

"Several search-related web services will continue to be supported, but strictly through YQL. These include the Yahoo! Term Extraction Web Service, Related Suggestion, and Spelling Suggestion. Other non-BOSS search APIs such as Web Search, Image Search, News Search and Site Explorer APIs will shut down with no further support in YQL. "

No more web search API is unfortunate.

"On October 1, 2010, we will close the SearchMonkey developer tool, gallery, and app preferences."

I have to admit I never quite figured out what SearchMonkey was for.

"We will be evaluating all our Geo, Maps, and Local APIs--updating or shutting down some of them, and working with our strategic partner, Nokia, on others. We will work with our developer community to ensure a smooth transition in all instances and we will share more details about these decisions in September."

This sent a shiver down me. After avoiding Yahoo! GeoPlanet for a few years out of fear it might get shut down, I finally decided to go full-hog with it on several recent projects (since Twitter and Foursquare had bet on it, so I figured it was probably safe). I really hope they don't kill it off - it's an incredibly useful API.

Doesn't DuckDuckGo use YahooBOSS and/or The Search API? Will this effect development(or the business) of DDG? DDG is awesome, so I'm just curious here.

Edit: I am aware DDG uses other sources, just curious how this affects things.

Gabriel was the first thing I thought of when I saw this link... I would be interested to hear how this impacts him and DDG.

It also uses Bing API if I remember correctly. Which is still free and unlimited.

From the FAQ:

How do you get your results? From many sources, including DuckDuckBot, crowd-sourced sites, BOSS & Bing.

Gabriel will be on TWiT tonight, hopefully this topic is brought up.

"I will be live on @twit at ~5PM ET with @ambermac talking about DuckDuckGo. Thx @AndyCrofford for the intro. http://live.twit.tv " -@yegg

I didn't know this was happening today! Thanks!

I went ahead and submitted it to HN in order to get the word out...

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1611966

It's happening right now, it seems.

Thx for the support and concern everyone. I've made a smooth transition to Bing, and BOSS is really a back-up at this point. There are other decent providers for what I use it for as well (Entireweb, Ask, Infoseek, etc.) and I am also looking to those for more backup (Entireweb already in place).

Moving to Bing proved that the way I was doing things it was possible to move and not effect the service much, so I'm really happy about that. Of course, the BOSS terms may be decent anyway. We'll have to wait and find out.

How is that possible? I'm reading the Bing terms of service (http://www.bing.com/developers/tou.aspx), and it seems pretty clear. From section 3c:

You will not, and will not permit your users or other third parties to: ... (c) modify, filter, obscure, or replace the text, images, or other content of Bing results, including by changing the order in which Bing results appear (but this limitation will not apply to Bing results of type "Web"), intermixing Bing results with search results from other sources, or intermixing with Bing results any other content so that the other content appears to be part of Bing results

These terms seem to pretty much prohibit using Bing search results for something like DDG, because all they let you do is change ordering. Am I missing something?

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I'm pretty sure Bing doesn't have a problem with what I'm doing. But in general, I believe in this: http://redeye.firstround.com/2009/03/nothing-to-lose-or-risk...

Site Explorer going away is going to make people sad too. I wonder how many non-pc users are going to be frustrated by the Bing webmaster tools requiring silverlight.

Silverlight is supported by MS on Macs and by Mono Moonlight on Linux.

The last time I tried it wouldn't work on a Mac. It seemed to require a very recent version of Silverlight and it acted like it was going to do something then gave me a bunch of blank boxes.

Definitely, losing the Site Explorer API means I've got to find a new data source for some of our internal tools.

If anyone has ideas, let me know. SEOmoz has some kind of API, but I don't know that it is cheap/complete enough to be a suitable replacement.

That's why you don't rely on free third party API's.

I'm seriously thinking of starting a Freebase alternative, but where you can pay to replicate and run your own copy of the database. Anybody think this would catch on?

Can't you already do this with the Freebase dump system?

They have dumps available, but their application and server are proprietary. And now that Google controls them I want nothing to do with it (other than maybe using one of their dumps to start me off).

Gotcha. I've also thought about producing similar dumps. Feel free to email to discuss.

This sucks. And it's going to break a ton of yahoo pipes.

Is there any free web search API?

Bing's API: http://www.bing.com/developers

Disclaimer: I work for Yahoo! I also have no insight into the Bing API roadmap.

To quote from the Bing Terms of service:

3. CODE OF CONDUCT / RESTRICTIONS ON USE.

You will not, and will not permit your users or other third parties to: (o) commercialize (i.e., sell, rent, or lease) Bing results;

12. PRE-RELEASE. The API (and related services) are pre-release versions. They may not work the way a final version of the API (and such related services) would. We may change the API (or these services) for a final, commercial version. We also may not release a commercial version, in our sole discretion.

As I read these conditions, so far the Bing API seems similar to how the BOSS API was before this post. Bing may results not be "commercialized". We've announced that ours is going commercial BOSS, that seems like a good thing for actual business rather than just hacking.

Disclaimer: I work for Yahoo!

We've said there will be ways to get BOSS without having to pay a fee. This will probably involve including advertising. The exactly details of this aren't available right now though.

This seems like an excellent opportunity for someone like blekko to fill the void site explorer's closing will leave.

Fk! I was building one search engine based on BOSS! Who will going to repay my time and energy?! I hate when the big companies decide just to unplug the product or worse "it's no longer free". I feel like a full,.

I demand you repay my time and energy.

I refuse to repay your time and energy.

I don't demand anything, I just feel fucked.

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