Any time I work with a Google API I am literally surprised how beautifully engineered they are.
I trust Google on this one too -- so much in fact, I believe they already have such an API that the website is interacting with, it is just not mature enough to be publicly accessible.
Re:Google+ API Launch Still Months Away
by georgemcbay on Wednesday September 07, 2011 @01:53AM
(#2968543)
Agreed 100%. The only issue I have with Google APIs is wondering if they might get cancelled. The actual APIs are a joy to use compared to most sites'. They are well designed, well documented, and mostly consistent across different products (once you implement something using one Google API, the rest look pretty familiar if you use them later).
My guess is that they actually have an internal API that they used to build their own "user facing" app.
But, their challenge could be that making an API public involves more than just having the lines of code to do what is necessary. Especially at their scale.
Google should have built an API first, and built their own Google+ website on it.