[nl]

This is factually incorrect.

Google has replaced the "Web Search API" with the "Google Custom Search API" (Custom Search Engine = CSE): http://code.google.com/apis/customsearch/docs/dev_guide.html

When you initially setup CSE you need to specify at least once site to search, but afterwards you can remove this restriction.

The API is limited to 100 calls per day by default, but you can ask for more. The old API would cut you off if you used it excessively from outside a web browser. The older SOAP API had a hard limit (I think 1000 calls?)

[BweezySearch]

nl,

There are two issues here:

1. You can ask for more, but how many will they give you? and 2. The fact that you need a key, makes it virtually useless for wide use in applications or websites. With the old api which didn't require a key, you had, practically speaking no limit when calling the api client-side. With the key that option falls away.

[nl]

With the new API console you can authorize/deauthorize your key on a per-website basis.

API keys are pretty standard for APIs - I hardly see that as a problem. The old version had one too: http://code.google.com/apis/loader/signup.html