Google has silently sunsetted its SOAP Search API in favor of fresh AJAX API, a move irking developers who literally relied on the pioneering Web services interface.

SOAP API was released during 2002, which allowed developers to begin incorporating data for the first time through Google's search results into their own non-commercial applications. SOAP API would now continue functioning for existing users who by now have keys, but Google do not dedicate any development resources to the retired interface.

This new AJAX API does have some specific advantages over SOAP offering: It's lightweight, much easier to be used and it does not have any daily limit on queries. The SOAP API never moved out of beta status and carried 1,000 queries per day cap. But the AJAX API, in beta does have other limitations such as returning a maximum of eight results per query.

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