Google Kills Custom Search API on Jan 1, 2027

[OP] alexey-salmin | 11 days ago

https://developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/overview

  Note: The Custom Search JSON API is closed to new customers. Vertex AI Search is a favorable alternative for searching up to 50 domains. Alternatively, if your use case necessitates full web search, contact us to express your interest in and get more information about our full web search solution.

  Existing Custom Search JSON API customers have until January 1, 2027 to transition to an alternative solution.

faangguyindia | 11 days ago

I was using it for an ai agent i built for my use as home assistant. It seems like many competing companies might be doing same.

ethancanterbury | 11 days ago

Microsoft already did this with the Bing Search API back in August 2025, killed both the free and paid tiers with nothing that drops in to replace it.

tmpz22 | 11 days ago

Not affiliated - would Kagis search API be a drop in replacement?

charcircuit | 11 days ago

Unlike Kagi, Brave Search's API has a free tier (1000 searches per month).

Krutonium | 11 days ago

All I'm sayin' is that Searx exists and can provide JSON.

edm0nd | 11 days ago

SearX isnt developed anymore. The main dev created Hister to replace it.

KomoD | 11 days ago

SearXNG is though, and Hister is a different thing, not really a replacement.

charcircuit | 11 days ago

Why would they do this as AI companies and agents have driven demand for other companies to want to integrate search into their products?

topherPedersen | 11 days ago

I commented the exact same thing. Couldn't Google save itself by becoming the search engine all of the AIs use? That's an area where I would imagine they have a massive moat & would be extremely difficult for startups to compete.

gallerdude | 11 days ago

Why would you use AI to write this post? If you can’t bother to write it, why should I bother to read it?

mpalczewski | 11 days ago

use ai to read it. we're increasingly moving to world of ai reading the ai slop that someone else wrote to basically get back their original prompt.

fluoridation | 11 days ago

What even is the point if transmitting two or three sentences doesn't dump five kilos of CO2 into the atmosphere?

VladVladikoff | 11 days ago

We really are speed running any percent to the destruction of decent quality technology.

ChrisArchitect | 11 days ago

Previously in January:

Updates to our web search products and Programmable Search Engine capabilities

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46730436

spottedmarley | 11 days ago

In the search game the board has changed

topherPedersen | 11 days ago

That's surprising to me that they would kill something like this off, because LLMs are going to need search APIs. Why wouldn't Google want to be the search engine all of the AIs use? While we (people) may not need search engines as much as we once did, LLMs probably do need search capabilities. I could be wrong, maybe reply if I am, but don't LLMs typically need to search for information? For example, when I ask ChatGPT some obscure question about my Behringer RD-8 drum machine, an LLM isn't going to know the answer based on its original training will it? (even if the manual was out in the public internet when the model was trained)? Under the hood its searching for information and then processing it extremelly quickly right? These LLMs don't just "know" the answer do they?

noosphr | 11 days ago

Google wants to be the AI that everyone uses, not the plumbing.

Octoth0rpe | 11 days ago

> because LLMs are going to need search APIs

Yes. But why would they provide that to their competitors? The winning move here is to allow gemini, but forbid everyone else. That's not a bad moat.

Maken | 11 days ago

Maybe they intend for Gemini to be the only chatbot with built-in access to internet search.

remywang | 11 days ago

Please link to https://developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/overview instead of whatever this is.

oompty | 11 days ago

Anyone know if that will affect stuff like Duckduckgo search for its !g fallback or do they have custom deals?

Georgelemental | 11 days ago

Isn't that just a redirect to google.com? Shouldn't be affected

efilife | 11 days ago

it won't, it appends your query like this: google.com/search?q={query}

you could code this yourself

hartator | 11 days ago

The article forgot to mention that Goggle is suing us, SerpApi the main alternative.

Our take: https://serpapi.com/blog/google-v-serpapi-motion-to-dismiss-...

charcircuit | 11 days ago

Thank you for fighting against the web being locked up. The openness of the web leads to valuable network effects that everyone can benefit from. Everyone benefiting from these network effects compounds and provides even more value to everyone else.

rbatista19 | 11 days ago

Plenty of alternatives that scrape Google: SearchApi, Serper, cloro, etc.

txomon | 11 days ago

I would totally recommend brave search. For us it highly improved our experience.