Future of BRPS

After I released the new client script, gas.js, I was very happy with it. Few modifications were made after, also included a piece of code for tracking usage using Google Analytics on around 9/21/2010. Here is a quick peek of statistics:

Few days ago, Google Code announced a new APIs console for easily monitoring API usage. I thought I might switch to this new stuff. But then I found out, they has deprecated Web Search API.

I'm officially doomed.

They promote Custom Search API as a successor. If you ever use Custom Search on your website, you know they are not the same. Custom Search API does provide APIs to create custom search engine and to retrieve the results. But that is not what BRPS needs. BRPS needs to search for any website which include the client script, creating custom search engine for each website isn't doable.

So, I have been thinking what options would I need to take once Web Search API is discontinued after three years:

• Accepting new brps.js client users,
• Using other search engine API, such as Yahoo!,
• Implementing Version 2 of BRPS,
• Waiting for enough developers whimpering and Google make changes to Custom Search API, or, my best option,
• Waiting for Blogger to release Related Posts gadget.

Who knows, we may see a new post on Blogger Buzz saying Related Posts is ready for you to try out.

So, the future of BRPS is we are still waiting to see.