> Develop Your Own Applications Using Google.

It might have been clever to change the headline of this post from something other than the original Google page title but, indeed, this says it best.

Some ideas for your non-commercial programs using Google Web APIs:
Auto-monitor the web for new information on a subject
Glean market research insights and trends over time
Invent a catchy online game
Create a novel UI for searching
Add Google's spell-checking to an application

There has been much talk of "why is this cool?" and the best explanation that I can glean at this point is, "The point is that Google is implementing a standardized thoroughly-documented way to programmatically access their outstanding service, which is going to facilitate widespread and rapid development and lead to uses no one has yet imagined."

To my non-programmer brain that is near esperanto but still far clearer than this explanation, "The first step of Level 2 of the www arriving in a cascading recombinance of web services and scripting glue."

Personally, I am going to need to wait and see what grows out of these Google Web API seeds.