Google unleashes web APIs

Software developers can query more than two billion web documents from their own computer programmes with a new web Application Programming Interfaces (API) service launched by search engine Google.

Using Simple Object Access Protocol (Soap), the web APIs service allows developers to programme in Java, Perl or Visual Studio .Net by calling on a remote service on the Google site and Web Services Description Language (WSDL) standards.

The company provides each developer who registers to use the service a limit of 1,000 queries per day. Since the APIs are an experimental free service, the amount of resources available are limited.

Google said the web APIs would allow developers to issue search requests to its index web pages and receive results as structured data. The service, which supports the same search syntax as the Google.com site, will also allow spell-checking and developers to access cache-stored information.

Applications can be created using the service, such as issuing regularly scheduled search requests in order to monitor the web for new information on a subject. It could also perform market research by analysing differences in the amount of information available on a subject over time.

The kit, which provides documentation, Java and .Net programming examples and a WSDL file for writing programs on any platform that supports web services, is now available at www.google.com/apis/download.html to download.

To access the service developers must create an account and obtain a key, which provides a daily limit of 1,000 free inquiries.