Google Translate API Shutdown

mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Per this announcement - sort of Twitter-esque in that they seem to be using API shutdowns as a way of steering people towards their own apps, but the upshot is that after December 1st the only apps that will be able to use Google's translation services will be Google's.

Anyway, I suppose there's still Bing Translate, but this effectively kills a couple of Google-Translate-based features we'd been thinking of adding (embedding translations in search results, e.g.); on the plus side, none of our competitors will have access to them either (unless we consider Google a competitor), and this acts as another excellent argument for our strategy of relying primarily on offline resources and not depending too much on the whims of website owners.
 
T

taiwanshaun

秀才
Yeah, I heard about this too. Even with the Web Elements replacement, it's still a difficult pill to swallow for a lot of developers. I've heard people suggesting migrating to Bing, as well as go old school Babelfish style. That being said, I agree, the less Pleco relies on online-only API's/resources, the better! Pleco's ubiquitous go-anywhere-use-anytime approach is a real advantage, as well as not being subject to internet stability / speed concerns / etc.
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
numble said:
After some outcry, they've decided to not kill it, but offer a paid version instead. So your competitors will still have access to it.
Click to expand...

Well, some, but given the near impossibility of Google charging once for every device / iTunes account that accesses the system, they're probably going to charge a rate for every, say, 1000 queries, and that might prove incompatible with a lot of people's business models. At the very least, the price for Google-Translate-based readers and such is going to be a lot closer to the price for our offline ones.
 
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