Good Move, Yahoo: APIs for Search
Yahoo tonight announced the Yahoo Search Developer's Network (no link up yet). In short, this is a program to allow developers to build upon the Yahoo Search and Overture platforms (Overture will be rebranded Yahoo Search Marketing Solutions - I was wondering when the Overture name was going to be phased out). This is big Web 2.0/Web as Platform news, and I can't wait to see what comes of it. From the release:
The Yahoo Search Developer Network features Yahoo! Search APIs which span Web search verticals, search engine marketing and direct advertising products including:
• Web search – leveraging Yahoo! Search Technology
• Image search – the largest image search index on the Web with more than 1.5 billion images
• Video search – providing users with one-click access to any video
• News search – with more than 7,000 news sources
• Local search – the most popular destination online for local information
• Spelling correction – advanced search query spelling correction technology
• Related searches – advanced search query recommendation technology
• Overture – access to its search engine marketing API program
Most APIs provide the developers with access to 5,000 queries per day per API, exceeding current competitive search API offerings.
That last part is a dig at Google, which limits its APIs to 1000 queries, hence there has been no real commercial development on top of the Google search platform. But will 5000 be enough? Not for really scaled innovations. Let's hope they figure out the model to allow for more....full release in extended entry.
Comments
It's up now at http://developer.yahoo.com/
That last part is a dig at Google
Google has been very generous in giving unlimited access to those who request.
This is big, and I think Yahoo knows how to launch and support this better than Google does. With samples from Paul Bausch of Blogger, Jeff Friedl, and a quote from Rael Dornfest, you have a team of O'Reilly authors helping launch.
More thoughts on the differentiation from Google over here: http://gotads.blogspot.com
There has been at least one commercial development on the Google Web APIs platform which uses more than 1000 queries per day. GoogleAlert has a paid alerting service (as well as a free one) - and the same company also does CopyScape which also has a paid version. Their FAQs state that "Google has generously provided Google Alert with a high-capacity Web APIs key for our needs." So it looks like Google do this on a case-by-case basis. I wonder if Yahoo will be as flexible?
It would be nice if Yahoo! could figure out Content-Type.
Unlike Google, the 5000 limit is per application "per IP". So it is a really sufficient for client side applications, such as the Firefox Search Sidebar. There might be some issues for users behind ISP's NAT to be counted as one IP though.
Yahoo API supports Java, PHP, Phython...etc. but how about the .NET??
Why doesn't Yahoo update API?
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