There’s been a flurry of commentary about Google deprecating their SOAP API. For amusement value, you can’t beat Steve Loughran’s “Slowly, all over the world, the lights on the SOAP endpoints are going out”; but the deepest thinking comes from David Megginson, in Beginning of the end for open web data APIs? If you care about the Web as a platform, be afraid, be very afraid. David has hit the nail on the head.
Comment feed for ongoing:
From: Jeff Hodges (Dec 19 2006, at 22:33)
Check out <a href="http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/">GData</a>. Based on Atom. Haven't gotten to read the developer's guide in full, yet.
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From: Pierre Phaneuf (Dec 21 2006, at 00:31)
I really hope that it turns toward GData (which is derived from Atom and APP, as a previous comment indicates), which would be quite interesting (subscribing to queries, anyone?), but in the meantime, it doesn't look too good.
Let's hope this is just a temporary measure until the arrival of something like GData...
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From: Vanessa Williams (Jan 04 2007, at 13:07)
Hi Tim, I agree it's bad news, but not necessarily across the board. You might be interested in my related post on "The Long Tail of Web Services" which discusses the differences in Google's and Amazon's strategies vis-a-vis openness to software processes. In the end, I believe it will be Google's loss, as others are leading in the right direction (Amazon being only one example.)
http://www.fridgebuzz.com/2007/01/long-tail-of-web-services.html
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