Outline of Google's new shopping API for web designers

Google has replaced the old Google Base API with a new shopping API, which will allow eCommerce focused users to contribute content and products into Google's databases and build web applications from Google's databases. The shopping API program was intended to be the next generation of the Google Base API program. The shopping API won't support all the previous uses of the former application, and they recommend to explore solving non ecommerce related needs using other tools. The content and search APIs can be used separately.

There are two components to the new eCommerce web development API:

• Content API: Programmatically work with structured data that you contribute to Google Product Search and Web Search.
• Search API: Allows web developers to build applications using product data from Google.

Even though the Base API will be terminated, some of the components of that tool may live on other Google tools.The Base API will be removed on June 1, 2011, but the company has created a migration guide to help web designers with updating their applications and data structure.

The content API will allow users to upload product data into many Google properties, including:

• Google Commerce Search and Shopping Rich Snippets
• Product Ads and Product Ads
• Google Affiliate Network
• Google Product Search