5 ms·

Google API Explorer

213 points by tzury 9y ago

cdancette 9y ago
They should add one column to display the expected time before they kill the service
- gcatalfamo 9y ago
  Even though it's becoming the same old google joke, such a well placed burn must have taken down a whole data center.
- tpush 9y ago
  Can we just ban pointless snark like this? No matter if it's directed at Google or Apple or whatever. It just has no substance and is tiresome to read over and over again.
  - cdancette 9y ago
    You're right actually, but I still think they could add some indications about the support time of a service. Like some guarantee that the service will be around for at least 3/5 years. Not necessarily in this API explorer, but for all their products.
- jkaptur 9y ago
  The joke is tired, but there may be a germ of an idea there. Maybe various SLA metrics could be added in a standardized way.
faze 9y ago
And why would I put in time learning these APIs if I have no guarantees they will continue existing?
- jeffcore 9y ago
  That's pretty much true of any service you don't control.
  - cdancette 9y ago
    That's more true for Google since very few of its product are actually making money. Everything comes from advertising, which comes mainly from Google search. This they have no real incentive to keep any product that doesn't display ads. A solution could be to let the users pay a little money for google services (and avoid tracking / use of its data for advertising? )
    - kyrra 9y ago
      Google's "other revenue"[0] for Q3 was $3.4 billion of the $27 billion it made that quarter. Other revenue is mainly Play, Cloud, and Hardware. So I'd say Google is making a lot of money from other avenues. [0] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204417000042/goog10-qq32017.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204417...
      - faze 9y ago
        Google is the master of leeching and rent-seeking. Just as they pit advertisers against each other to drive up prices for impressions on third party sites, for which they keep a large middelman fee, they use the same tactics on Google Play. Developers get to bid on the #1 search result spot, while Google is milking them for 30% of gross revenue for providing a rather abysmal ZIP file download service. They are only able to charge such high fees because of the exclusivity and network effects from being pre-installed on every GMS Android phone. Other examples of similar rent-seeking platforms are Apple App Store, Windows Store, Steam.
    - jpatokal 9y ago
      Many Google APIs either offer paid premium tiers (eg. Maps) or are pay per use (all Cloud APIs).
    - manigandham 9y ago
jgunsch 9y ago
Hey, eng lead here for the APIs Explorer. Despite the site's ancient appearance, we're not killing it, and have some plans in the works. (You can see some of the work we've been doing on developers.google.com, with "Try this API" on the right [1]). Feedback I'm interested in: What do you use the APIs Explorer for? What features would you like to see? [1] https://developers.google.com/google-apps/calendar/v3/reference/calendarList/list https://developers.google.com/google-apps/calendar/v3/refere...
- erichurkman 9y ago
  > ancient appearance You mean usable and fast without needless animation like everything in material design?
  - derefr 9y ago
    You say "without needless animation"; I say "makes me, as someone with a sensory integration disorder, able to refocus my eyes to the new text more quickly." (And then someone else says "makes me, as someone with the other kind of sensory integration disorder, overwhelmed and distracted and so hinders my fluency.") Accessibility is not a scalar; some people need things that other people don't; some things X people need hurt Y people, and vice-versa. The animations might not help you, but they help someone.
    - scardine 9y ago
      By your own argument, animations != accessibility. Animations MAY be a matter of accessibility for some people and an accessibility problem for others - real accessibility would be making it optional instead of the default.
      - derefr 9y ago
        My actual argument would be to do real usability testing to see whether either of the options (more animations; less animations) helps, on average, if made the default. An analogy: the way we use capital letters in English helps to guide and reorient the eyes of people who are dyslexic. But English's capital letters also help in the same way—just to a lesser degree—the people who aren't dyslexic. It turns out that capital letters are just a good idea on average, like e.g. the wheelchair ramps built into sidewalk curbs. Now, there are probably at least a few people in the world who can read English text better without capital letters for whatever strange reason. But if the average person can read better with them there, then it's better to enable them and make disabling them an option, rather than to disable them and make enabling them an option. The average person, not thinking of themselves as needing assistance, wouldn't look in the options for an "enable capital letters" option. And so the average person, who could have been helped by the assistance, would have QALY left on the table—and that's a large amount of QALY when multiplied by the number of "average" people, compared to the two groups that have specific, recognized problems that they'll know usually have solutions in options menus.
zokeia 9y ago
Can you really trust any of these to exist long-term?
- ben_jones 9y ago
  You can probably group them into two categories: APIs that Google makes money from, and those they don't. The former probably will stick around, especially the ones having to do with Ads.
ImJasonH 9y ago
Hey! I made this in ~2012 (2011?) or so, and it's still one of my greatest accomplishments. Glad people still use and like it. :-)
- nickthemagicman 9y ago
  Thanks JasonH!
pmontra 9y ago
I used API Explorer to learn the API of a GApp I had to integrate in a customer's web app. It's OK but I wished for a couple of improvements: 1) I failed to notice some errors and messages because they appeared below the fold and nothing close to the submit button hinted me that something happened. Furthermore having to scroll up and down to type and to check the results is far from optimal. 2) It should at least nudge the API developers to write documentation and make it appear in the page. I was left too many times wondering what the attribute names picked by the developers were meant. They eventually sent me a Google Doc. Compare this to Swagger's in page hints and examples.

Google API Explorer

213 points by tzury 9y ago

cdancette 9y ago

They should add one column to display the expected time before they kill the service

gcatalfamo 9y ago
Even though it's becoming the same old google joke, such a well placed burn must have taken down a whole data center.
tpush 9y ago
Can we just ban pointless snark like this? No matter if it's directed at Google or Apple or whatever. It just has no substance and is tiresome to read over and over again.
- cdancette 9y ago
  You're right actually, but I still think they could add some indications about the support time of a service. Like some guarantee that the service will be around for at least 3/5 years. Not necessarily in this API explorer, but for all their products.
jkaptur 9y ago
The joke is tired, but there may be a germ of an idea there. Maybe various SLA metrics could be added in a standardized way.

faze 9y ago

And why would I put in time learning these APIs if I have no guarantees they will continue existing?

jeffcore 9y ago
That's pretty much true of any service you don't control.
- cdancette 9y ago
  That's more true for Google since very few of its product are actually making money. Everything comes from advertising, which comes mainly from Google search. This they have no real incentive to keep any product that doesn't display ads. A solution could be to let the users pay a little money for google services (and avoid tracking / use of its data for advertising? )
  - kyrra 9y ago
    Google's "other revenue"[0] for Q3 was $3.4 billion of the $27 billion it made that quarter. Other revenue is mainly Play, Cloud, and Hardware. So I'd say Google is making a lot of money from other avenues. [0] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204417000042/goog10-qq32017.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204417...
    - faze 9y ago
      Google is the master of leeching and rent-seeking. Just as they pit advertisers against each other to drive up prices for impressions on third party sites, for which they keep a large middelman fee, they use the same tactics on Google Play. Developers get to bid on the #1 search result spot, while Google is milking them for 30% of gross revenue for providing a rather abysmal ZIP file download service. They are only able to charge such high fees because of the exclusivity and network effects from being pre-installed on every GMS Android phone. Other examples of similar rent-seeking platforms are Apple App Store, Windows Store, Steam.
  - jpatokal 9y ago
    Many Google APIs either offer paid premium tiers (eg. Maps) or are pay per use (all Cloud APIs).
  - manigandham 9y ago

jgunsch 9y ago

Hey, eng lead here for the APIs Explorer. Despite the site's ancient appearance, we're not killing it, and have some plans in the works. (You can see some of the work we've been doing on developers.google.com, with "Try this API" on the right [1]). Feedback I'm interested in: What do you use the APIs Explorer for? What features would you like to see? [1] https://developers.google.com/google-apps/calendar/v3/reference/calendarList/list https://developers.google.com/google-apps/calendar/v3/refere...

erichurkman 9y ago
> ancient appearance You mean usable and fast without needless animation like everything in material design?
- derefr 9y ago
  You say "without needless animation"; I say "makes me, as someone with a sensory integration disorder, able to refocus my eyes to the new text more quickly." (And then someone else says "makes me, as someone with the other kind of sensory integration disorder, overwhelmed and distracted and so hinders my fluency.") Accessibility is not a scalar; some people need things that other people don't; some things X people need hurt Y people, and vice-versa. The animations might not help you, but they help someone.
  - scardine 9y ago
    By your own argument, animations != accessibility. Animations MAY be a matter of accessibility for some people and an accessibility problem for others - real accessibility would be making it optional instead of the default.
    - derefr 9y ago
      My actual argument would be to do real usability testing to see whether either of the options (more animations; less animations) helps, on average, if made the default. An analogy: the way we use capital letters in English helps to guide and reorient the eyes of people who are dyslexic. But English's capital letters also help in the same way—just to a lesser degree—the people who aren't dyslexic. It turns out that capital letters are just a good idea on average, like e.g. the wheelchair ramps built into sidewalk curbs. Now, there are probably at least a few people in the world who can read English text better without capital letters for whatever strange reason. But if the average person can read better with them there, then it's better to enable them and make disabling them an option, rather than to disable them and make enabling them an option. The average person, not thinking of themselves as needing assistance, wouldn't look in the options for an "enable capital letters" option. And so the average person, who could have been helped by the assistance, would have QALY left on the table—and that's a large amount of QALY when multiplied by the number of "average" people, compared to the two groups that have specific, recognized problems that they'll know usually have solutions in options menus.

zokeia 9y ago

Can you really trust any of these to exist long-term?

ben_jones 9y ago
You can probably group them into two categories: APIs that Google makes money from, and those they don't. The former probably will stick around, especially the ones having to do with Ads.

ImJasonH 9y ago

Hey! I made this in ~2012 (2011?) or so, and it's still one of my greatest accomplishments. Glad people still use and like it. :-)

nickthemagicman 9y ago
Thanks JasonH!

pmontra 9y ago

I used API Explorer to learn the API of a GApp I had to integrate in a customer's web app. It's OK but I wished for a couple of improvements: 1) I failed to notice some errors and messages because they appeared below the fold and nothing close to the submit button hinted me that something happened. Furthermore having to scroll up and down to type and to check the results is far from optimal. 2) It should at least nudge the API developers to write documentation and make it appear in the page. I was left too many times wondering what the attribute names picked by the developers were meant. They eventually sent me a Google Doc. Compare this to Swagger's in page hints and examples.