Google announced on Friday that the Web Search API is officially retiring. The day has been coming for four years, but it is finally approaching.

Google product manager Dan Ciruli writes on the company’s Developers blog:

On November 1, 2010, we announced the deprecation of the Web Search API. As per our policy at the time, we supported the API for a three year period (and beyond), but as all things come to an end, so has its deprecation window.

We are now announcing the turndown of the Web Search API. You may wish to look at our Custom Search API (note: it has a free quota of 100 queries per day).

The Custom Search API was named as the direct replacement for the Web Search API back in 2010.

Google says he service will officially cease operations on September 29th.

Image via Google