Google Analytics now has A/B Testing!

Yesterday we posted about Google introducing BaaS for mobile developers.

Today, there is another new stuff from their labs: A/B Testing, and integrated into Google Analytics!

This feature is known as "Experiments". You can refer to the developer documentation.

It looks awfully for developers only. If you are not a developer, perhaps Optimizely is better for you.

Google also jumped onto the BaaS bandwagon

Google has launched their own Backend-as-a-Service, like Parse (now belongs to Facebook) and Helios (Heroku).

They called it the Mobile Backend Starter.


As the creator of Android, it is no surprise they created a much needed service for mobile developers.

The question now: Would Apple be jumping onto the bandwagon?

We will find out in WWDC 2013.

Google Drive API

Almost as soon as Google Drive was launched, Google Drive API is launched. You can CRUD files on yours, or your users, Google Drive.

The API is launched with 5 SDKs at start - Java, Python, PHP, .NET and Ruby.

This is again a storage API.

Google Drive API

Need I say more?

It's already here, together with the service.

Google OAuth 2.0 Playground

Google has published a nice tools for OAuth 2.0. They call it OAuth 2.0 Playground.

It provides an Interface for 3-steps to calling an OAuth powered API.

First, you get require the authorization code with a certain scope of use. Second, you exchange an access token with the code. Lastly, you call the RESTful API with the access token.

Google+ Hangout API

Google just announced their Hangout API for Google+.

Checkout how to write an app from their documentation. Includes sample code for a voting widget.

Google Data API - New Objective-C Library

Google has released a new Objective-C library for Google Data APIs. 

In this release, they have added new services – Tasks, Books, Latitude and URL shortener.

If you are building iPhone/iPad apps, or Mac apps, you ought to check out this library.

Google App Engine: Increased Pricing

Google App Engine has announced going out of preview (when were they considered a preview anyway?). 

In doing so, they have introduced a new pricing – in other words, increased pricing.

Some developers felt they are forced to leave the service, because for them, the cost would have increased threefold, or 30 folds which killed service like PlusFeed. If you are one of the "victim", you might want to share your experience in this discussion.

Personally, I use App Engine for various small web apps and websites. Fortunately, I am not affected, because my apps have small usage.. If this change affected me, say if I need to pay $9/mth, I will feel cheated by Google. This is because App Engine has been widely regarded as a cloud platform offered by Google, for free. 

Google Translate is Now a Paid API

Google has announced a paid version.

The language translation service costs $20 per million characters of text (or approximately $0.05/page, assuming 500 words/page). To use, look at their v2 doc.

While Google is coming up with paid APIs, developers are digging out secret, free APIs, like the speech recognition API in Chrome.

Google Acquired Dealmap, with API for Local Coupons

With the recent acquisition of The Dealmap, Google now adds to its arsenal another great API.

The Dealmap API let developers add and search local deals.

Google might not have a successful Groupon product, but acquiring such an API now could help path it's way to that market.