Why this FUD? Let's scrap or sniff Google tools as before!
Why should anyone ever use a Google API again?
151–160 of 185 posts
Re: Why should anyone ever use a Google API again?
#152Quote from Fred Wilson at TC Disrupt NY:
Don’t be a Google Bitch, don’t be a Facebook Bitch, and don’t be a Twitter Bitch. Be your own Bitch. (link: http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/23/fred-wilson-be-your-own-bit...)
Re: Why should anyone ever use a Google API again?
#153Some of the Google API are released early to get contributions, testers and inputs to improve their services. In other words, they abuse their contributors to improve their services without thanking them or helping them on the long-term. The translation service is one of them, the massive improvement of the translation service came from the many inputs received by people using their API.
It shows again the importance of building free software along with their free network services. That's quite challenging and difficult but it shows that initiative like http://autonomo.us/2008/07/franklin-street-statement/ is not completely useless on the long run.
Re: Why should anyone ever use a Google API again?
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. This is a great opportunity for a startup to swoop in, clone the Google API so the only change necessary is authentication tokens and URI, and get everyone to switch to their (paid) platform.
It's hard for a startup to "swoop in", because Google uses statistical analysis in it's translation software if I understand correctly various articles about this topic. This means that they have thousands of correctly translated documents from which the software learns. And (so they say) it gets better and better with time, because they feed it more and more documents in various languages. I'm sure I've overly simpl…
Sure, but a business that depends on this functionality would probably take "somewhat worse translation quality" over "completely dead translation capability". As the startup gets funding and customers, they can focus on performing the same kind of analysis and focusing specifically on translation, instead of the buckshot approach taken by Google. I am completely confident that a startup staffed with talented people can match Google Translate's quality in a reasonable amount of development time, and in the meantime, something is better than nothing.
Re: Why should anyone ever use a Google API again?
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nobody is arguing that they don't have the right, but there are social implications to doing so. People have the right to not like them because of it. You also have the right to not write thank-you cards when people do nice things for you, but those people have the right to react to your selfishness.
I can understand being unhappy because they've decided to deprecate a free API. I disagree with the rage of the OP. This was a free service and they're no longer going to offer it, and they're shutting it down in an orderly manner. That's not selfish. This is more like someone giving you a birthday present every year, and then when they fail to send you one, you write a nasty post about how greedy and selfish they ar…
Yes I agree, one should always be grateful!
I think it is difficult to compare this to a birthday present you did not receive, though. It is more like they want you to throw away the birthday present you got last year; a present you were grateful for and that now plays an important part in your daily routine.
Re: Why should anyone ever use a Google API again?
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google's App Engine is pretty much a for-profit API. And now they've announced a change in their pricing scheme, which if true, would change App Engine from pay-what-you-use to same-as-amazon-aws-but-pricier scheme, which makes it hugely expensive for a large portion of devs that have built on top of App Engine. And migrating away from App Engine is a total pain in the ass. I truly hope that the blog-post missed impo…
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.
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Re: Why should anyone ever use a Google API again?
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google's App Engine is pretty much a for-profit API. And now they've announced a change in their pricing scheme, which if true, would change App Engine from pay-what-you-use to same-as-amazon-aws-but-pricier scheme, which makes it hugely expensive for a large portion of devs that have built on top of App Engine. And migrating away from App Engine is a total pain in the ass. I truly hope that the blog-post missed impo…
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.
add to that, google blocks access to what ever countries they want
Re: Why should anyone ever use a Google API again?
#158Hotmail deleted my account after 28 days and i lost contact with all the people i met in my year of travelling.
Yahoo killed their spell checking api in april and now i need a new word splitter. Any ideas?
Re: Why should anyone ever use a Google API again?
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would be willing to bet that most of them have mitigation strategies in place that they can, at least in part, switch to. They don't use them because they are less cost effective than AWS (or other current providers) but they should be able to switch with relatively little notice.
I believe you, but I would be willing to bet those mitigation strategies are a few unmaintained word documents that would be grossly insufficient if it actually came that far. I don't see why NetFlix would have to be more paranoid about AWS, then say Apple about Foxconn. Business is business, except at Google.
Netflix is actually pretty well known for its resiliency to AWS outages.
Re: Why should anyone ever use a Google API again?
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, and it is deprecated, not shutdown: "we have no current plans to remove existing functionality".
Fair point, but isn’t that basically what deprecation is? A communication that something will likely stop working at some point?
Yes, so you may have to spend some of that money you have not been paying Google for Feedburner, and use it to build or buy a replacement.