Why should anyone ever use a Google API again?

Post by xpaulbettsx » Fri, May 27, 2011, 9:42 PM UTC

jcampbell1 wrote: post #78

magicalist wrote: post #66

I keep hearing about hypothetical for-profit products and people's weekend hobby projects being affected by this change, but does anyone have any example of an actual business that will be affected by this change? Note that most of these APIs have 3 year deprecation policies and so will continue to be around; only the translate api is going away (and that's in December). I have serious doubts that almost anyone would…

Yes. I hire many translators. We use google translate, and license professional dictionaries to speedup the process. I estimate that Google translate saves us $20k/year. I personally would be willing to pay a lot for continued access to the translate API. (I'll probably just end up using some sort of iframe hackery when the translate API goes away) The actual business is http://www.yabla.com/

Post by prodigal_erik » Fri, May 27, 2011, 9:46 PM UTC

kkowalczyk wrote: post #103

nhoj wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never liked app engine. To me it seemed like you have to lock yourself into google as a vendor because your application has to be designed for app engine.

I never liked Linux. You have to lock yourself into Linux APIs because your application has to be designed for Linux. I never liked relational databases. You have to lock yourself into SQL because your application has to be designed for SQL. I never liked python. You have to lock yourself into python because your application has to be designed for python.

Post by borism » Fri, May 27, 2011, 9:48 PM UTC

prodigal_erik wrote: post #113

kkowalczyk wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never liked Linux. You have to lock yourself into Linux APIs because your application has to be designed for Linux. I never liked relational databases. You have to lock yourself into SQL because your application has to be designed for SQL. I never liked python. You have to lock yourself into python because your application has to be designed for python.

Relying on a service hosted by a third party is fundamentally different. Nobody, not even Torvalds or van Rossum, could throw a switch and shut down your Linux boxes or your Python interpreter, so any needed migration to an incompatible system can happen at your convenience.

Post by kprobst » Fri, May 27, 2011, 9:59 PM UTC

digitallogic wrote: post #87

nikcub wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Microsoft did this with the Windows API ten years ago people would be going absolutely batshit crazy in here and the government probably would have intervened

They did a little shy of ten years ago with VB6. People did indeed go batshit, but the government did not get involved.

Post by naa42 » Fri, May 27, 2011, 10:12 PM UTC

nikcub wrote: post #112

eli wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure I follow. Microsoft discontinues products too. I would imagine that anyone who based a company off supporting and integrating with Frontpage got screwed.

yes but you can take an app from the 80s and still run it on Windows 7 today