Google Pulls Access To Unsupported But Popular Weather API 168
New submitter drsmack1 writes with news of some bummed out programmers losing access to an undocumented Google API. From the article: "The curious popularity of the Google Weather API appears to be coming to a close. The search giant never officially supported the feature, but developers have used the unofficial feed available from the iGoogle homepage. With iGoogle now set for deprecation in November, developers are reporting that the once simple weather API is no longer returning data."
Seems like the sort of thing you could replace with a tiny bit of XSLT.
Re:Any alternative? (Score:5, Informative)
Sure: http://www.wunderground.com/weather/api/
Re:What is the point? (Score:3, Informative)
Which part of "unsupported" did you not get?
2013 (Score:5, Informative)
With iGoogle now set for deprecation in November
That's November 2013.
Re:Any alternative? (Score:5, Informative)
http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=44.89640&lon=-93.61164939999998&unit=0&lg=english&FcstType=dwml [weather.gov] an XML link as an example.
You can get it as KML as well whatever that is.
Re:Microsoft use of this API exposed? (Score:4, Informative)
Do you even try to research things on your own or just like to make up shit wearing that tin foil?
The desktop weather gadget uses msn services:
http://weather.service.msn.com/find.aspx?outputview=search&src=Windows7&weasearchstr=90210&weadegreetype=F&culture=en-US
Easily verified by watching traffic and changing your zip code
Re:Any alternative? (Score:5, Informative)
I can explain what happened.
I work for Weather Central in Madison, Wisconsin. In December we were purchased by the famously rich Rothschilds of Europe and they brought in a charismatic new superstar CEO. Seven months later, they cashed out to the tune of +$15 million, selling to our historical nemesis and competitor, Weather Services International.
WSI is owned by The Weather Channel Companies, which is an umbrella company for The Weather Channel (duh) as well as Weather Underground, which they recently bought. (TWCC is owned by NBC Universal, which is owned by Bain Capital and Blackstone Group. That means I now work for Mitt Romney.)
This consolidation is complete. Over 90% of the worldwide weather services business is now owned by TWCC, which used that considerable power to negotiate a contract with Google. The contract stipulates that TWCC (and their sub-companies) will provide data to Google, and in turn Google would eliminate its weather API, because TWCC has its own weather APIs (more than one of them now, in fact). The API at my company is cleverly named DataCloud: http://datacloud.wxc.com/?vs=0.9 [wxc.com].
This consolidation is definitely good for TWCC, which will never again have to worry about competing in the marketplace. The monopoly will last until a disruptive technology displaces it in a couple decades, if it's anything like other stale monopolies. Unfortunately, it is definitely bad for the other 7.01 billion people on the planet, who now only have one source for weather data.