Google is taking an approach towards search and datamining that is diametrically opposed towards the web search platform and Elastic Computing Cloud of Amazon/Alexa. 

Even as Amazon works to democratize access to web indexes and scalable web services, Google is increasingly becoming a data black hole, collecting and mining data from everywhere for its own purposes but exposes little of what what is mined to other web services.

Google’s Search API was always more of a toy than a real platform– the limit of 1000 queries per day was uselessly small, as was the limitation of only being able to access the first 1000 results of any query.

Recently, Google discontinued support for their Search API, and is no longer issuing new API keys.

What would people say if Microsoft stopped issuing “API keys” and documentation for Windows developers?

A project called EvilAPI aims to be a replacement for the SOAP Search API, and is an expression of the frustration felt by developers left out in the cold.

In response to Google’s discontinuation of support for their SOAP Search API, we have created the EvilAPI. The EvilAPI supports most of the same SOAP calls that Google’s SOAP Search API supports — it just doesn’t use their deprecated API to get the data. Instead, it uses page scraping. Evil? Maybe. But not nearly as evil as providing a powerful development tool for people who are loyal to Google and then discontinuing it without any warning or regard to their users.

Of course Google disallows EvilAPI in their terms of service and can break it at any time they chose.

There’s a clear parallel between Google’s closed approach to data and Microsoft’s closed approach to software, and a clear need for a more open marketplaces for data as pioneered by Amazon. Fortunately, developers do have a choice and a chance to exert market pressure on Google.