There seems to be at least one lesson here for developers relying on Google's good will.<p>Take your pick:<p>a) Don't rely on Google to keep services around forever<p>b) Ain't no such thing as a free lunch<p>c) Google has only one true product, and it's advertising<p>d) <feel free to add more><p>Despite extraordinary profits, Google is really starting to tighten the reigns. I'm guessing that speaks to a feeling of market saturation. They may no longer be on a breakneck growth curve like in the old days.
My coworker and I spent the last several months building an iPad app on top of the News Search API. And now all that work is for naught! That is a serious bummer.
This make me think about something Fred Wilson said at TC Disrupt ...<p>Don’t be a Google Bitch, don’t be a Facebook Bitch, and don’t be a Twitter Bitch. Be your own Bitch. (link: <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/23/fred-wilson-be-your-own-bitch/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/23/fred-wilson-be-your-own-bit...</a>)<p>I've spent the last few days trying to use the terribly documented (and frequently changing) Facebook API ... and I wonder, why am I putting myself through this abuse? FB is not unique here ... Twitter's APIs are pretty flakey too in terms of how often they fail. It made me realize that my objectives and that of my API's provider are clearly not the same.<p>I love APIs but I'm tired of getting beaten up by them. </rant>
They're shutting down the translate API? I hope they're releasing a replacement - it's incredibly powerful, though I can't see how it commercially benefits them.
The only API's I've used, that are being shut down, are the Translation and Image Search. I had a little app that looked up the original word and translated word then displayed images; that way I had a better reference to what that word meant(Rosetta Stone). It was just a toy, but I'm sad to see it go!
Shutting down the Wave API seems to be the final nail in the coffin since they decided to discontinue Google Wave, in August of last year.<p><a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/update-on-google-wave.html" rel="nofollow">http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/update-on-google-wave...</a>