Thursday, December 21, 2006

Don Box on Google Search API

Don Box weighs in on Google deprecating their SOAP search API and releasing an AJAX one. Choice snippet:

In my mind, this is a significant step backwards.

It's one thing to say move from SOAP to POX or even XML to JSON - the former move trades off extensibility in the spirit of YAGNI, and the latter move trades off SGML synergy for a better impedance match to most people's programming languages.

It's another thing entirely to require someone to use a specific language, runtime, and even local API to get at your service.

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.

Been there, done that.

Yes, this is Microsoft advocating openness...and Google advocating proprietary-ness. Right on, Microsoft.

2 comments:

Travis said...

[Imported comment* originally authored by Iffy.] Google is an advertising company. From their own FAQ: "Yes. The Web Search results may include up to 2-4 clearly marked sponsored links.". It does Google no good to give you nice and clean XML which you then strip out the ads from. No revenue there. It's really just Google advocating getting more money. Sucks whatever way you look at it.

Travis said...

[Imported comment* originally authored by Travis.] Very good point, Iffy.