I think it is unfair to blame Adam here - if you look through this group you'll see he has been very helpful in replying to developers. The problem is the google bureaucracy, which is inevitable when you have such a large company.
I do understand google's concern about spammers and scammers using the API, but even when you do have an innovative use for the API (as we have), google still makes it virtually impossible to use. The search API is limited to 100 queries per day, and after that you have to pay $5/1000 which is a total non-starter for any startup hoping to actually make money. We wanted free access to the search API in return for putting adsense ads on our site, which would seem to be a good business model for google, but we haven't heard anything after making the request to google. Also we applied to use adsense custom search ads on our site, but haven't heard back anything from google on that either (even though we have been using regular adsense on our other sites for years). We can't make any money without having both a free API and custom search ads. Right now we have neither, so we are stuck with bing's API. (It's a nice API, but as we all know bing sucks big time compared to google). My suggestion would be to allow developers to request access to a full- featured API including images, search, news, scholar, etc with all the features that google has (sort by date, etc). Have a contact person (a developer or product manager) vet the requests and give access on a case-by-case basis (but please don't make us wait months for an answer). Give free access if the site uses adsense, otherwise charge the $5/1000 queries fee. Also make it easier to sign up for adsense custom search ads, as that is the only real way for sites to make money out of this. I see this as a win-win for google - they foster innovation, they can make money through the adsense ads, and they can take any good ideas and put them into google. Dave On May 27, 12:46 pm, Zdravko Gligic <[email protected]> wrote: > Adam, > > It is quite difficult to be "innovative enough" with SearchAPI, such > that it does not compete with your own paid for service for site > indexing and searching. > > However, why did you ever even bother with TranslateAPI? > > For example, I was hoping to use it for translation of content that is > created within an ethnic community site. While it would have been > great to be able to translate all content that users would get to see, > I would have settled for being able to translate just the content that > is created by community members. In this case, it would have been > more than good enough to do the translations only once and then > forever to serve cached translations. However, you have contributed to > the overall misery by insisting that such caching could not exceed > more than 15 days. > > Would you care to give us some examples of how you would have hoped we > would have used the TranslateAPIif not for simple uses cases of > translating user created articles, blogs or even chats ? > > I am sorry to say itAdam, but you have FAILED US MISERABLY - likely > not just you personally but both you and your GOOG colleagues who are > incapable of ensuring that you had in place decent business models for > all of the fantastic things that your techies were able to cook up. > > I am sorry, but I have staked too much on what used to be GOOG's solid > name and reputation. Being an independent pre-funded developer, it > does not take much. BUT - NEVER AGAIN WILL I MAKE THAT MISTAKE !!! > > Regards, > Zdravko -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google AJAX APIs" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-ajax-search-api?hl=en.
