Although Google began as a search engine, an industry they quickly dominated, they’ve since branched out to the web application market, in a very big way. You probably already know about, or use, Gmail, a web email application that rivals the features (and often surpasses the usability) of most of the desktop email clients currently in use. The Google wheels of innovation haven’t stop there. Today the Google web application universe includes Google Maps, Google Docs (documents, spreadsheets and presentation tools), Calendar, Blogger, YouTube, advertising applications like AdWords and AdSense, the Google Mashup Editor and many more. In fact, most of what we consider traditional desktop apps are fast becoming web based, and although Google isn’t the only player (Flickr, Del.icio.us, BaseCamp), they’re certainly one of the biggest players.

Great, Google builds wonderful web apps. How does that help me with my next web app project? Well it turns out Google wants us to leverage their hard work by letting us build web on top of their technology. And it’s free! (did you hear that Microsoft?).

An API (Application Programming Interface)  allows other developers to integrate with and leverage that application’s functionality for use in their own application.  As a web developer I can use the Google APIs to build web sites with incredible functionality on a limited budget.

Imagine I’m building a website that includes event listings. The owner of the site needs to update these events so typically a content management tool is created to allow them to add, update and remove events. This may sound trivial but if you’re a developer you already know this can turn into a serious amount of time, especially when you start to consider all the additional little features like notifying stakeholders that an event has changed, or converting times into the users local time zone. Instead I can uses the Google Calendar API to do much of the heavy lifting. I create and manage events using the Google Calendar Application and then retrieve the information for display on my site using the Google Calendar API. My event content management tool is provided entirely by Google Calendar. Not only do I not have build an event management tool, I’m almost certainly getting far more functionality than I could hope to provide on a reasonable budget.

Although Google isn’t the only web company providing APIs (in fact most of the well known, progressive web companies are doing it), the amount of intellectual property Google is giving to the web development community is incredible.   So if you’re developing new websites or web applications be sure to check out the free functionality provided by the Google APIs. Not only can it make you look good, but it may save you a bundle in development time.