Google has announced that as of July 1 it will be charging a fee for the developer interface to its AdWords advertising program. The API, which is marked "Beta," allows programmers to administer numerous AdWords accounts simply and quickly via an SOAP interface and is meant to appeal in particular to marketing and advertising agencies. Until now Google has allocated free quotas to developers, the size of which was determined by the number of AdWords customers attended to. For the various activities undertaken with the AdWords API the developers "paid" a certain number of quota units. When the quota cap was breached, the service reacted by sending an error message. From July 1 on Google will within its "Commercial Developer Program" be charging 25 US cents for 1000 quota units. In the case of commercial agencies that could well amount to a sum of several thousand dollars a month. The developers and agencies concerned are not only outraged about the fee, which they have as yet been unable to enter into their calculations for their applications. What is more, the company's modified Terms and Conditions are not only phrased in a fairly ambiguous manner, but are also highly restrictive into the bargain. Thus while Google vaguely promises that "certain developers, such as those who design proprietary applications to advertise their own businesses, may be exempt from a portion of these fees and terms." The search engine titan is demanding at the same time that all AdWords applications implement all functions of the interface. In addition the new General Terms and Conditions prohibit the use within the program of services of Google competitors such as Yahoo or MSN -- not even data of "third parties" may be stored together with AdWords data. (Robert W. Smith) / (jk/c't) http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/72087 http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=31083
Very bad news, Here follows the direct link to the Google Announcement: http://adwordsapi.blogspot.com/2006/04/revisions-to-adwords-api-beta-program.html