Someone over at Google must have made a mistake – they announced news that Google+ Photo & Video APIs will be released soon, only to take down the posts shortly after that. Good thing the Internet has a memory now thanks to the caching system by none other than Google themselves, where this page had already been spotted by others as well in the process. The removed blog post did mention that this initial API will pave the way for developers to gain read-access to users’ content, so for the moment, third party apps are unable to upload new photos as well as videos. This is still an important step though, considering how photos and videos could very well make or break a social network – take for example Facebook – they are the world’s largest photo site, hands down. An excerpt from the pulled blog post is available after the jump for your perusal.
Google+ gives users full control of their information, and we’re starting with read-only access to public albums, photos, and videos. Google also supports Creative Commons licensing, which we expose so developers can easily respect copyrights.
Using the new API, developers can get a list of public albums from a Google+ user, and list the photos and videos within each album. Combined with our existing public data and search APIs, I’m hoping to see new services such as a family-focused ‘screen saver’, a new way to crowdsource great images, or a live photo wall for a party.