December 22, 2006 at 9:10 am · Filed under Attention, Web 2.0
Steve breaks radio silence and admits he is a pooka (from Bad Sinatra).
A lot of good stuff in this post, but I want to highlight one part.
I posted the other day about the deprecation of the Google API. My take: good for the Google; bad for the gaggle (i.e., the application developers). Fun to talk about, but there are pragmatic solutions to this. Something to be scared of? No.
We (the users) needn’t be scared of vendor choices like this. Why not? Because nobody is forcing us to use these services. As Steve says:
Who am I supposed to be scared of? Google? Nope, if the Ajax API and the terms of service around including unaltered adsense are so counter to user interest, that will precipitate a decline in usage and therefore less adoption of Google properties. Seems self-correcting to me: user votes, user wins. Why do we need saving here?
Exactly.
[tags]GestureBank, Gillmor Gang, gillmor, Pooka, Google, APIs[/tags]
Tags: APIs, GestureBank, Gillmor, Gillmor-Gang, Google, Pooka
December 21, 2006 at 2:18 am · Filed under Web 2.0
Two guys who know a thing or two about web services and APIs think the new Google Search API is a step backwards. I agree.
My guess is that some high up at Google thinks of it as a step forwards. Perhaps someone asked the question:
Why are we providing search results into arbitrary applications, when in fact, we are in the business of serving ads on Web pages?
An AJAX-only API is a fine way to do just that; but like Don Box says:
No matter how you define “web service,” I don’t think this newest offering qualifies.
I’m hoping this is just an anomaly and not a trend, lest we all fall back into the world of opaque/closed protocols.
Google doesn’t have to provide open and interoperable APIs to the world; but, I bet others will.
[tags]Google, AJAX, Search, APIs, Web Services, XML, SOAP[/tags]
Tags: ajax, APIs, Google, Search, SOAP, Web-Services, XML
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