Google web api dead, Bing the sole survivor... | Hacker News Reader

Google web api dead, Bing the sole survivor...

16 pointsBweezySearch7 comments

Google announced on Nov 1st that their web ajax api was deprecated. Now that the Yahoo BOSS api will be switching over to the Bing index, the only api alternative left will be Bing (or BOSS, but thats the same). Kinda scary to go from three apis (G,Y,B) to just one in a few months, limiting choice and potential competition in the industry...

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A quick summary and a bit of info:

Yes, Google pulled the plug on the web search AJAX API and replaced it with Custom Search Engine (CSE). The new API does allow you to search the entire web and is near identical to the old which is good, but has the 100 queries/day limitation. This is bad and a show-stopper for a lot of people.

Here's what I've learned:

1. You can request more units but no one has responded to me in any way since Nov. 1.

2. The form to request a higher quota asks you if you're a Google Site Search customer. That makes me think that it may make a difference to be a customer of a paid service they have. (FYI: Google Site Search is apparently a different name for Enterprise Custom Search which I'm hoping is the same technology as CSE and will allow you to search the web.)

3. If you want to BUY the super high volume Site Search service as we are willing to do, you have to communicate with the Sales team, but no one has responded to us on that request either.

4. Another interesting approach that I'll try soon is this: CSE gives you the API to actually create a custom search engine on the fly. But this requires separate Google logins and some work in implementing the ClientLogin authentication business. At the end, you're still limited to 100 queries/day but at least it is "per client".

I hope someone from Google is reading this and can shed some light on the issue.

Damn, of the two search engines left, half of them don't provide an api. :)

At Blekko, we are planning to provide search apis very soon. Stay tuned.

They've deprecated the "Web Search API", but replaced it with the "Google Custom Search API" (which requires an API key): http://code.google.com/apis/customsearch/docs/dev_guide.html

Huge difference between the two, unfortunately. The CSE is made for specific websites, not web-wide search. And it's limited to 100 queries (more if you ask for it, but still limited) per day per key. Compare that to the previous unlimited search api!

This is factually incorrect.

Google has replaced the "Web Search API" with the "Google Custom Search API" (Custom Search Engine = CSE): http://code.google.com/apis/customsearch/docs/dev_guide.html

When you initially setup CSE you need to specify at least once site to search, but afterwards you can remove this restriction.

The API is limited to 100 calls per day by default, but you can ask for more. The old API would cut you off if you used it excessively from outside a web browser. The older SOAP API had a hard limit (I think 1000 calls?)

nl,

There are two issues here:

1. You can ask for more, but how many will they give you? and 2. The fact that you need a key, makes it virtually useless for wide use in applications or websites. With the old api which didn't require a key, you had, practically speaking no limit when calling the api client-side. With the key that option falls away.

With the new API console you can authorize/deauthorize your key on a per-website basis.

API keys are pretty standard for APIs - I hardly see that as a problem. The old version had one too: http://code.google.com/apis/loader/signup.html

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