Your Call to Action

If you've read the entire chapter, you know what a Web service is, how the Google Web Services fits within the general definition of a Web service, and what you can use the Google Web Services to do. You can use this knowledge to create opportunities to exercise Google as a search engine for all kinds of tasks . Data mining is increasing in importance as companies strive to gain more from the resources of the Internet ”this technique accesses the needed information and discards unneeded information. At this point, you also have a machine that's setup to create a Google Web Services application of some sort and you have the Google Web Services Kit installed.

The next step of the process is to evaluate where you're going based on the content of this chapter. You need to consider what you want to do with the information Google provides, how you plan to present it, your own capabilities, and the capabilities of the person using your application. This may sound like a lot of work, but it's important to create a firm foundation for your application. When you take these preliminary steps, you begin thinking about problems and solutions to those problems.

Chapter 2 builds on the knowledge you gained in this chapter. The emphasis of Chapter 2 is on data mining ”the process of using specialized search techniques to whittle search results down to just the links you need. In many cases, you can also access these search techniques using Google search page, but the emphasis of data mining is automation. Only by using the Google Web Services can you automate the search process and then display the results in the form you want, rather than rely on Google's formatting methodology.