This is a clear example of why building on proprietary APIs is risky for indie devs and small startups. I've seen similar patterns with Twitter's API restrictions and other platforms gradually closing down their ecosystems.
For anyone affected: consider this a forcing function to either:
1. Build your own lightweight search infrastructure (tools like Meilisearch, Typesense make this more accessible now)
2. Use adversarial interop via services like SerpAPI (though Google is already taking legal action there)
3. Pivot to specialized vertical search where you control the data sources
The real lesson here is the importance of owning your core value proposition. If your product's moat depends entirely on a third-party API that can be yanked away with 12 months notice, you don't really have a sustainable business.
Google is essentially saying: indie search is dead, pay enterprise prices or leave. This will probably accelerate the trend toward specialized, domain-specific search engines that don't rely on Google's index at all.
For anyone affected: consider this a forcing function to either: 1. Build your own lightweight search infrastructure (tools like Meilisearch, Typesense make this more accessible now) 2. Use adversarial interop via services like SerpAPI (though Google is already taking legal action there) 3. Pivot to specialized vertical search where you control the data sources
The real lesson here is the importance of owning your core value proposition. If your product's moat depends entirely on a third-party API that can be yanked away with 12 months notice, you don't really have a sustainable business.
Google is essentially saying: indie search is dead, pay enterprise prices or leave. This will probably accelerate the trend toward specialized, domain-specific search engines that don't rely on Google's index at all.