Google extends SSL to developer facing APIs

Firesheep‘s authors can be the satisfied with the gradual migration towards SSL that most of the biggest social networks, search engines, online shops and others have embarked upon since its advent.

Google, which has already taken care of its users and encrypted its Web Search, Gmail and Google Docs, has now turned its attention to the APIs used by developers.

“For most APIs, our technical documentation, client libraries and code samples already use SSL,” announced Adam Feldman of the Google Developer Team. “Many new APIs and versions will be SSL only. Further, the Google Maps API, which previously offered SSL only to Premier customers, is offering SSL to all developers starting today.”

They also made it so that all those who use the Google Documents, Google Spreadsheets and Google Sites APIs must use SSL connections for all API requests from now on, since they disallowed HTTP requests.

“Although we’re initially requiring SSL for only a few APIs (those whose traffic was already mostly over SSL), we strongly recommend that you convert all your API clients as soon as possible to help protect your users’ data,” he pointed out, and advised them to take a peek at the updated documentations for the APIs for more details.