Hi Nadine, your "history and timeline" is incomplete. Let me help you out:
The *v1* of the Google Ads API had already been declared "production ready" on *March 4, 2019 * <https://ads-developers.googleblog.com/2019/03/upgrade-to-new-google-ads-api-to-get.html>but had to be *pushed back to beta* three months later on July 2, 2019 <https://ads-developers.googleblog.com/2019/07/google-ads-api-returning-to-beta.html> due to the bad overall performance. It stayed in (second) beta over a year until September 21, 2020 <https://ads-developers.googleblog.com/2020/09/announcing-google-ads-api-is-out-of-beta.html>. It had reached v5 <https://ads-developers.googleblog.com/2020/08/announcing-v5-of-google-ads-api-beta.html> by then. So when you announced the production readiness of the Google Ads API *for the second time in 2 and a half years*, not everyone jumped on the train right away. It was a bad timing. The v5 was a mess because the transition to field presence instead of wrapper types was only done for half of the resources <https://ads-developers.googleblog.com/2020/08/announcing-v5-of-google-ads-api-beta.html> by then. And there did not seem to be any urgency for switching from AdWords API to Google Ads API. Despite the frequent questions in this group about the sunset or deprecation date of the AdWords API, you never mentioned, that this will be a gradual process escalating over time until this very posting of yours yesterday. We were kind of lucky because we started to move to the Google Ads API in March 2019 already, but that was pure gambling and no one knew for sure for years if the Google Ads API will continue to be developed or not. Regards Mat adsapi schrieb am Donnerstag, 17. Juni 2021 um 20:34:39 UTC+2: > Hello Oliver, > > Nadine here from the webinar. The webinar does not provide not a lot of > time to give an in-depth answer to your question as we need to cover a lot > of questions, so I would be happy to do so now. I'll cover a bit about the > timeline, the history of what's happened so far, and a little more on why > changes happen. As a fellow engineer, I realize that it's frustrating when > you have to make changes to your code, especially when it has been working > for a long time, but I feel understanding the 'why' can help in your > planning. We do not make these changes unless there are valid business and > technical reasons. > > <essayAlert>I really want to cover everything to make it clear on the > 'why', so I realize this is a bit verbose.</essayAlert> > > *History and timeline* > > The AdWords API has gotten old enough that it could be a teenager by now. > In order to provide opportunity for greater innovation, we had to upgrade > the API technology and the underlying infrastructure, which historically > we've done about every 10 years. Yes, there was an API before the AdWords > API that existed for approximately 10 years. This journey started when we > launched Google Ads API v0 > <https://ads-developers.googleblog.com/2018/04/join-beta-for-new-adwords-api.html> > > in May 2018. We stopped adding new features to the AdWords API in September > 2018, which was about the time that the legacy AdWords UI was replaced by > the new Google Ads UI that you see today. As a result, depreciations have > been occurring regularly to the AdWords API for almost three years. You can > see the full history ( > https://ads-developers.googleblog.com/search/label/adwords_api) of fields > being deprecated, field values changed, or reports being deprecated. > > In September 2020, we announced GA > <https://ads-developers.googleblog.com/2020/09/announcing-google-ads-api-is-out-of-beta.html> > > for the Google Ads API, which means it was ready for production use. This > was the point when many developers already started moving to the new API, > and some have already finished their migration. Most of the features were > already in the API, but we had a few left over that weren't as commonly > used. We were finishing those up when we announced the sunset > <https://ads-developers.googleblog.com/2021/04/upgrade-to-google-ads-api-from-adwords.html> > > of the AdWords API in April 2021. > > *Why the changes* > > There are a few general reasons why I said that there are likely changes > that will happen to AdWords API reporting from now until April 2022 when > the AdWords API sunsets: > > - As mentioned above, there have been these changes to AdWords API > reporting since September 2018 since we do not do releases for that API ( > https://ads-developers.googleblog.com/search/label/adwords_api). We do > not have a full roadmap of the upcoming changes from now until April 2022. > As soon as we know, then we post to the blog. Just based on the history, > there will continue to be changes. > - The data you see in the Google Ads UI is a mirror of the Google Ads > API. The AdWords UI was a mirror of the legacy AdWords API that was shut > down around 2018. That's why we can't always match the AdWords API to the > Google Ads UI any more. They are not mirrors of each other. When we make a > change to the current UI, we can't make the same change to the AdWords > API, > only the Google Ads API. We then need to make a decision on how to best > keep the data in the AdWords API reasonably close to the Google Ads UI. If > we can't keep the data in line with the Google Ads UI, then we need to > deprecate the AdWords API item and usually recommend the Google Ads API > instead. > - As I mentioned in the webinar, sometimes we cannot add new Google > Ads features unless we deprecate something in the AdWords API. In the case > of the recent announcement, we have new features and new metrics we want > to > introduce to these reports. However, since the AdWords API does not have a > release where we can add those, then the reports would be returning > incorrect data in the future if we kept the reports in place. This means > that our only option is to remove the report because it cannot support > anything new and would end up returning incorrect data. Not returning data > is preferable to returning possibly incorrect data. > > We judiciously weigh deprecation of any fields or reports; it's something > that we argue back and forth until we come to a solution where it's the > only option that preserves integrity of information. The AdWords API has > been an amazing API for years and has served us well, but it's at a point > where we need to move to a completely new stack in order to support great > new features in the future. > > Best, > > Nadine Wang, Google Ads API Team > > > ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q2IvzuS:ref > -- -- =~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~ Also find us on our blog: https://googleadsdeveloper.blogspot.com/ =~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "AdWords API and Google Ads API Forum" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/adwords-api?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "AdWords API and Google Ads API Forum" group. 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