I'm still irritated with Google Reader story. How long is this one going to be around, year, two? I think Google should start pledging a number of years they will support a service, why should the developer be taking most of the risk?
Just because google shut down reader doesn't mean that this applies to their APIs more than any other company's. If you build something that relies on an API that can disappear at any time, you have nobody to blame but yourself.
The examples I can think of off hand are all Google App Engine related but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the Drive APIs have the same thing.
Here we have what looks like a cool, well documented, API to a powerful service supported by a major company and instead of talking about the cool things we could build with it we seem to be indulging in that most deplorable and pointless of past times - the fan boy cat fight.
This is still called "Hacker" news correct?
FYI the translate API is paid - not retired. The rates are very low and free for limited use. Furthermore CalDAV was one of the worst things I have ever had the displeasure to work with - why are we mourning that ?
Now - can we please talk about something worthwhile like ... Oh! ... the OP /rant
Yeah, it's been 6 whole days! Some people really dwell in the past, don't they? I don't see what the big deal is, especially since Google has already given us something way better, which will replace RSS, Twitter, Facebook, and probably email – in a couple of months everyone will be using Google+ and we'll have forgotten all about Reader.
Plus my point was that the demise of Reader had nothing to do with the OP, and that its continued discussion in any post containing the letter G was pathetic, detracting from more interesting conversations we could and should be having - like the one about the possibilities of the new Drive API...
I'm tired of the railroading and the assumption that a for-profit organization has some sacred duty to think about anything more than its bottom-line. That Google thinks beyond its bottom line quit often (Glass, Cars etc...) is to its credit - IMO that it does not do so all the time (Wave, Buzz, Video, Reader etc...) is NOT to its discredit.
Google's problem right now is that it has pissed off a vocal minority with the Google Reader shutdown, so any announcement is being met with pessimism and mistrust.
Google Translate? Google Search API?
>Move on.
Yes, let's just forget about all the stuff Google does that sucks and pretend it never happened.
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=anon1385
https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=anon1385
Carry on, I guess.
There has been a lot of Google news the last week, and loads of submissions on HN, so I've made quite a few posts on them. That is hardly comparable to having an account for a year or more but only ever posting in stories about a single corporation to defend that corporation.
I don't know why you linked my submissions, only 4 out of the last 30 of them, going back ~560 days were about Google or Google products.
His point is that things must never change?
Google Docs looks like it has a healthy future, but they very easily could decide they don't want the API out there. Particularly with Google's newfound lack of fear of pissing people off.
Drive is now a pillar of Google's services, not just Apps but Google Now and search rely on data stored in it, and with many competing storage services around any differentiating feature is worth having.
Last weeks reshuffle which had the Maps and Commerce units absorbed into the Knowledge and Ads units respectively and Pichai taking over Android brings it down to 5 focus areas:
SVP of Knowledge/Search — Alan Eustace, SVP of Identity/Social — Vic Gundotra, SVP of Advertising and Commerce — Susan Wojcicki, SVP of YouTube/Video — Salar Kamangar, SVP of Android, Chrome and Google Apps — Sundar Pichai
The key distinction between Drive and Reader is that Drive is pretty much the embodiment of Google Apps itself, whereas Reader was an orphaned product which didn't have a home in any of these 5 post-Page areas.
[1] https://developers.google.com/translate/
[2] http://googlemerchantblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/new-shopping-...
in the first case the developer is the user adopting the API, and enhancing his own service with it, without the end user noticing it.
With this new API the end users of the product will be people with google accounts which will be able to seamlessly interact with 3rd party products. This greatly benefits the company as a platform, which seems to be the recent focus (which led to unpopular unfortunate choices as dropping "leaf" products).
It's ok to criticize that choice etc, but that's another topic. I guess that if you want to build an application which leverages on the google's ecosystem, it's a reasonably safe bet it won't be dropped soon, as google has a immediate return from it (unlike translate API for instance).