Earlier this month it was announced that Google will be no longer giving out keys to its SOAP based Search API.

This has some developers worried and it has me a little worried to because we have developed some cool little proprietary apps using the SOAP API. I am wondering if they are eventually going to shut off access it completely, causing many developers to re-code their apps using the Google Ajax API.

Martin Lamonica' s article at CNet News had some interesting thoughts:

Perhaps Google is trying to influence technical debates--it also has developed GData, another data access API. But ultimately Google is likely favoring the Google Ajax Search API for business reasons--that is, they expect to see more better Web applications and more traffic through that method

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