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Google to offer for-pay Translate API

googlecode.blogspot.com

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Re: Google to offer for-pay Translate API

#31

Post by thatusertwo »

steevdave wrote: post #15
thatusertwo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its true, facebook is making a new type of internet. Its hardly about search anymore, now people search facebook for content. Social networks are a fad like anything else but they are winning now.

Wait what? People search on Facebook for content? Maybe for content of what their friends are up to. I've never considered a social networking site to be a search engine, and considering Facebook's abysmal attempts at targeted marketing (their ads SUCK at relevance) no matter how many time I tell it that a certain ad is of no relevance. I just don't see how Facebook is "winning the web war". Maybe I have different fr…

That is certainly a valid point. Mostly what happens with people on facebook is that they stay on facebook. They play games, they chat, they look at pictures they stay on facebook. When you goto a movie the ads don't have websites, they have facebook pages. Facebook has created a new type of internet, a more closed siloed internet (Dave Winer reference). People used to use the internet, now they use sites.

The new layer is data locked into private site that farm content.

Re: Google to offer for-pay Translate API

#32

Post by codexon »

tlrobinson wrote: post #13

If they had just announced they would be charging for it people would also be upset. By announcing they're shutting it down, then backpedaling a little by offering to charge for it developers can't be as upset. Genius!

Maybe they didn't think anyone would pay for it.

Re: Google to offer for-pay Translate API

#33

Post by sorbus »

tlrobinson wrote: post #13

If they had just announced they would be charging for it people would also be upset. By announcing they're shutting it down, then backpedaling a little by offering to charge for it developers can't be as upset. Genius!

It's also a very good way to figure out how many people would actually be willing to pay for it. Not the best way, obviously, due to the number of irritated developers, but it might provide more accurate results than a survey, and certainly gets people to speak up.

Re: Google to offer for-pay Translate API

#34

Post by jnhnum1 »

tlrobinson wrote: post #13

If they had just announced they would be charging for it people would also be upset. By announcing they're shutting it down, then backpedaling a little by offering to charge for it developers can't be as upset. Genius!

did you even consider that this was genuine?

Re: Google to offer for-pay Translate API

#36

Post by Klonoar »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #8
sidmitra wrote: post #4

Interesting, would love to be a fly on the wall at internal discussions at MyGengo

I thought MyGengo was in the business of real translations, not machine translations. How is this relevant?

Full Disclosure: I work with myGengo.

We offer machine translations for free, but also offer human translations for (IMO) pretty good rates, and they can all be gotten from the API. I assume the parent comment (of the parent comment of this comment... yeah) was speculating on how we were planning to deal with Google ever deprecating their machine translation. :)

tl;dr I don't believe we were ever too worried, as we're certainly no slouches in the tech department ourselves. Initial shock was there though, definitely a "wtf" moment.

Re: Google to offer for-pay Translate API

#37

Post by sidmitra »

Klonoar wrote: post #36
jcampbell1 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought MyGengo was in the business of real translations, not machine translations. How is this relevant?

Full Disclosure: I work with myGengo. We offer machine translations for free, but also offer human translations for (IMO) pretty good rates, and they can all be gotten from the API. I assume the parent comment (of the parent comment of this comment... yeah) was speculating on how we were planning to deal with Google ever deprecating their machine translation. :) tl;dr I don't believe we were ever too worried, as we'r…

Yeah not only that. Now that it might be a paid product, they might start focusing more on it? and lead to overall improvements, with paying customers keeping them up at night.

Re: Google to offer for-pay Translate API

#39

Post by myth_drannon »

It's absolutely unbelievable that for a solved problem we don't have reliable offerings and need to beg Google/Microsoft for an api access or buy expensive enterprise software. How difficult is to take one of the thousands open source translation libraries that every university's linguistics department offers and turn it to some semi-correct service
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