Extended Support Life For APIs, While Once Early Service Discontinued

Google director of developer products Tom Stocky said that the new Code Labs framework had been built to help foster a "a culture of exploration and rapid iteration" among programmers who, through Google's APIs, help the company's services interact with third-party sites throughout the Web.

"We're pleased to introduce Google Code Labs today as a home for developer products still in their early stages of development," Stocky wrote in amessage posted Tuesday on the Google Labs blog. At the time of Tuesday's launch, the new Code Labs site contained detailed project information for the majority of the more than 60 APIs that comprise Google's developer program.

Stocky said that the new Code Labs program would benefit both Google engineering teams and developers outside of Google. "The Labs program offers engineering teams at Google and the developer community a chance to explore ideas and get involved early," Stocky wrote in the Tuesday message.

The 27 new Google Code Labs graduate APIs included those for Google's popular AdWords and AdSense programs, 

Google Code Labs Centralizes Developer APIs

Google chose some of its most-used APIs as initial graduates from the new Code Labs program, Stocky said. "We're also announcing that several of our best-known and most-used APIs and tools are among the first set of Google Code Labs 'graduates' -- including App Engine, Google Web Toolkit, AJAX Search API, Maps API, Earth API, Calendar Data API, YouTube APIs, and more," Stocky noted.

Graduates of Google Code Labs have been given a period of official support from Google, a move likely to attractdevelopers during a time when an increasing number of technology companies are releasing a steady stream of competing APIs.

"For these graduates, we're increasing our commitment with published deprecation policies and other critical support services," Stocky said of the initial graduates of the new program. The policies relating to the API for interacting with Google's photo-sharing service Picasa offered a glimpse at the type of support the new graduate APIs can expect, Stocky said. "They state that we'll support each version for at least 3 years from when it's deprecated or a newer version is introduced. It will be 3 years for most, but it might be less for some," he noted.

The support policy for graduates of the Code Labs program included some variation, Stocky noted, such as the AdWords API which contained a four month support policy for old versions. "We're working to get policies posted for the other graduates as well, though the time period may vary a bit from product to product," Stocky wrote in the Tuesday message.

Google Launches Code Labs For Developers Including 27 API Graduates

Stocky said that some APIs included in the new Google Code Labs program had multiple features each covered under slightly different deprecation policies. "Some products will have features labeled 'experimental' that could change (or even be removed) at any time, while the rest of the API is covered by a deprecation policy with long-term support," Stocky noted.

To become a graduate of the new labs developer program, APIs will have to meet certain requirements, Stocky said, such as "having a dedicated, ongoing engineering team and comprehensive test suite."

Google also announced that it will retire its SOAP Search API, one of its earliest APIs, at the end of August, having stopped accepting developers Tuesday. "We'd like to bid a fond adieu to one of our first developer products, the venerable SOAP Search API," Stocky wrote Tuesday, noting that the API had "been deprecated since 2006, when we stopped accepting new developers for the API."

Most of the functions the SOAP Search API had performed have been taken over by Google's AJAX Search API, Stocky said, and Google offered guidance for any developers still using the SOAP Search API wishing to move to the AJAX-based API.