The Last Word: Google Search API, now in AJAX

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Finally, and after a very long time Google has woken up to the big favour it'd be doing by allowing its web searches to be personalised per site, or the API opened to people. Although this is not the way I was hoping this would happen, still, something is better than nothing.

Google today unveiled the Google AJAX Search API. Unlike other services however, this one is not in Beta. Its version 0.1, and Google states that version 1.0 will be the stable release which will likely contain ads. Why am I not surprised!

For the moment it seems like version 0.1 only offers searches for the Web, Videos and Blogs. Straight from the horses mouth:

The Google AJAX Search API is an experimental API that lets you integrate a dynamic Google search module into your web pages so your users can mash up Google search results with other content on your site or add search results clippings to their own content.

The AJAX Search API is currently in Version 0.1. It's an experiment designed to get developer feedback and may change dramatically over the next several months, so you shouldn't deploy this on your mission-critical web site just yet. When we formally launch Version 1.0, it will likely require code changes to your site. Version 1.0 will also likely contain advertising.

The API is a free beta service, available for any web site that is free to consumers. Please see the terms of use for more information.

Yahoo! really can overtake Google in the site search department if it just ups it search. They can also overtake Google by becoming the most used search engine (with minumum hits on their search engine page) since their JSONP feeds can be used to make a generic search, rather than a blog search. But this is a good step for Google! Especially after my last review of their API. I don't think they'll be offering feeds for their searches anytime soon, the API gimmick puts those rumours to rest, and rightly so since any raw data from Google will eat out of their revenue from Adsense.

Let's see whats next for Google! :)

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4 Comments

Thanks for the sharing :0-)

Gaby de Wilde, on Fri Jun 02, 02:33:00 AM

Wow! That's a mucked up smiley! :P

I would've taken supreme pleasure in putting this up if Google had announced JSONP for their services. They didn't, so life continues to be hard. The day Google announces that, you'll see the next hack! Asynchronous Generic Search!

Although due to Adsense constraints, I don't see that happening! Damn you adsense!!

*ahem*

You're welcome! :)

Aditya, on Fri Jun 02, 03:24:00 AM

(hello, I'm testing this comment hack)

azer, on Fri Jun 02, 01:20:00 PM

Pretty cool. I guess I know where my free time is going this weekend. :-D