Google becomes SOAP dodger

SEARCH outfit Google has quietly dumped its search SOAP API and says it will no longer be issuing keys to run it.

The normally upfront organisation has removed the SDK from their site without even issuing a blog about it.

According to radar.oreilly.com, Google says it will support existing users, but not users who through their own actions fail to exist.

Google will not do any bug fixes and is suggesting that developers move to the AJAX Search API instead.

However there is simmering discontent among SOAP users who consider the AJAX Search API less flexible than SOAP API.

Web developer Paul Bausch is quoted as saying that Google abandoning Soap was a bad move because the Google API was used as an example of how web services work.

Hundreds of training books and online examples use the Google API to show how to incorporate content from another site into a third party application.

More here. µ