Google just announced a new Google Base data API. This is significant for developers. Will be interesting to see what happens becaus of it. Thanks to Richard MacManus for letting us know.
Now we know why they hired Vic Gundotra. You can see that Google is going to build a whole developer program.

[...] Scobleizer highlighted the release of Google API via Google code updates. According to them the API [...]
[...] Google Base Data API is now available for developers. (via Scobes) [...]