Question

I’m looking to search Google from my Android app and return results. Everything I’ve found points towards the Google Web Search API which the page now says is deprecated and is being replaced by a Custom Search API.

The new custom search API only allows you to search through websites you’ve created a custom search engine for. I want to search all of the internet as anyone would through Google.

How can I do this?

Answer 1

Android has a lot of search capabilities – all built-in.

Look here:

http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/search/index.html

Google Code and the Android SDK are two different things. The Web Search API is Google Code and, and you noted, it has indeed been deprecated in favor of Google Custom Search:

http://code.google.com/apis/customsearch/v1/overview.html

http://www.google.com/cse/

Finally, here’s a good blog entry that shows you how to invoke a Bing/Yahoo! web search from Android:

http://www.codexperiments.com/java/2011/01/create-your-own-web-search-application/

Frankly, the Bing API looks a heck of a lot better than Google Custom Search. Starting with the fact that Bing’s API doesn’t limit you to 100 queries/day like Custom Search does 🙂

‘Hope that helps!