announcement | Mapsys.info (2) Mapsys.info

Yahoo! Maps APIs Service Closure – Due 13th September 2011

(And suggest working/moving to Nokia Maps and Nokia Maps API)

“As part of Yahoo!’s commitment to creating deeply personal digital experiences, we have been reprioritizing our current portfolio of mapping products to refocus on a great consumer Mapping and Local Search experience. After careful consideration, Yahoo! will no longer support the below Maps APIs as of Sept 13, 2011. However, we are continuing to invest in our core maps offering at Yahoo! and later this year will announce more details of our strategic partnership with Nokia, so stay tuned!

We will continue to support a number of location APIs and encourage you to use our Placefinder API for geocoding, our Local Search API and Placemaker for geoparsing.

In the meantime, we have decided to close the following Maps APIs:

ActionScript 2 & 3 (Flash APIs)
AJAX Maps 3.6, 3.7, 3.8
REST API (Map Image API)
Simple API – (No coding)
GeoRSS – Version 2

Supported Geo APIs and alternative services
Yahoo will continue to support a number of location APIs. We encourage you to use our Placefinder API for geocoding. The Local Search API remains available and Placemaker is still available for geoparsing.

Developers who wish to implement maps, routing and traffic into their web pages may use third-party developer networks for mapping services. We suggest using maps from our partner Nokia. Please go to api.maps.ovi.com/ for more information.

Q&A

Q: On what exact date will the Yahoo! Maps APIs be shut down?
A: Yahoo! will no longer offer the Maps API service as of September 13, 2011.

Q: Why is Yahoo! removing the Maps APIs service?
A: In order to focus on our core strengths and deliver new innovations, we are reprioritizing our portfolio of products and services – increasing investment in some areas while scaling back in others. This will allow us to continue improving the Yahoo! Maps and Local Search experience and allow us to focus on providing best-in-class digital media, content and communications experiences.

Q: What Maps APIs will remain available for developers?
A: Placefinder, Placemaker and Local Search will continue to be supported.

Q: What other resources are available to developers wishing to use maps?
A: Developers who wish to implement maps, routing and traffic into their web pages may use third-party developer networks for services. We suggest using maps from our partner Nokia. Please go to api.maps.ovi.com/ for more information.

Q: What is the status of Nokia integration with Yahoo! maps and navigation services?
A: This work is in-progress and we plan to have something to announce later this year.”

Google I/O: Spring cleaning for some of APIs

Google I/O is always an exciting time for developers. This year we made 34 separate announcements, including 7 new APIs:

Discovery Service
Tasks API
Books API
Pagespeed Online API
Places API (now generally available)
Prediction API (now generally available)
Fusion Tables API (additional feeds)

With all of the recent API announcements, our API directory is getting quite long! However, some of our older APIs have been superseded by bigger and better things and others may not be receiving the necessary love.

As the web evolves and priorities change, we sometimes deprecate APIs – that is, remove them from active development – to free up resources and concentrate on moving forward. Today we’re announcing a spring cleaning for some of our APIs.

Note that the vast majority of Google APIs are not affected by this announcement.

Following the standard deprecation period – often, as long as three years – some of the deprecated APIs will be shut down. The rest have no scheduled date for shutdown, but won’t get any new features. The policy for each deprecated API is specified in its documentation.

These APIs are now deprecated but have no scheduled shutdown date: Code Search API, Diacritize API, Feedburner APIs, Finance API, Power Meter API, Sidewiki API, Wave API
These APIs will be shut down as per their deprecation policies: Blog Search API, Books Data API and Books JavaScript API (not the new API), Image Search API, News Search API, Patent Search API, Safe Browsing API (v1 only), Translate API, Transliterate API, Video Search API, Virtual Keyboard API

Wherever possible, the documentation includes suggested alternatives designed to help you achieve similar functionality — whether it’s a new version or related offering. We hope these alternatives, along with lengthy deprecation periods, will help minimize the impact and allow us to focus on building great products together.

Breaking News- Google Thinks it Needs “Some Support” In Maps

Yesterday Marissa Mayer was quoted as saying in regards to Maps and Places at SXSW: “We do need to have some support there, and step up our customer service,”.

I must admit as a veteran of the “Google Maps support wars”, it was refreshing to hear Marissa Mayer (allegedly?) note the need for support. That being said the fact that it’s taken Google 5 years (or is it 6?) to figure this out and get to the point of publicly so noting has to be cause for concern.