September 14, 2005
MSN Search API is here!
I'm not sure how many caught the c|net news article late last week, or the short and sweet confirmation on the MSN Search Blog last week, but it's really true. MSN is coming through with their own API for people to use in colating the data they have available. It also looks like they're going to come out of the box swinging!
What I know so far:
Their Virtual Earth already has a way webmasters can utilize it. I expect this will get better with time, though it is already quite good. In my mind Virtual Earth is like the next step in evolution from Google Maps or even MSN Maps.
Hopefully they follow the same sort of idea they have with the Virtual Earth connectivity, as it can even be used for Commercial Applications. (Wooohooo! Though my intention is still to release most everything, if not everything, freely.)
The query limit is going to be more akin to what Yahoo's API license than to Google's. Same concept really. The developer applies for an Application ID to build into their API app, then the query limit counts against the IP number that is running queries. MSN's beginning query limit 10,000 per day per IP. So double Yahoo's current beginning limit and blowing Google's limit into the dust.
They have some infomation uploaded already. The main area is here. One thing you'll note there is that the only SDK currently available is for Virtual Studio .NET 2003 or above. Which is a bit of a pain for those web developers who really have no need to drop the kind of dollars that VS costs.
I've already asked the question on their very new forums, and you are not roped into using (or buying) Visual Studio to make use of the MSN API. You can also connect with it via SOAP, much like with Google's API I would imagine. I've not tinkered with it yet, and there is little, okay no documentation at this point. But I've raised the point on the developers forum and will start tinkering as soon as I can find a few spare moments.
If nothing else, I can attempt to document my experiences here for the benefit of others. Though it would be very nice if the MSDN or MSN folks were to release PHP, Java, etc toolkits as all the rest do. It wouldn't surprise me at all to see this happen in the very near future, as MSN has always been quite responsive. And it will only help them to reach already established API developers.
More as I know it!