Hello, I was hoping for some clarification on using an automated process to access the Google spreadsheet API.
According to several examples online, it's OK to use Google Apps Scripts to automate repetitive tasks with Google products (e.g. Google Spreadsheets) http://code.google.com/googleapps/appsscript/ http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/05/old-tool-new-tricks.html …and so on… But, if you look at the Google Terms of Service, it states clearly in section 5.3 (http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS): 5.3 You agree not to access (or attempt to access) any of the Services by any means other than through the interface that is provided by Google, unless you have been specifically allowed to do so in a separate agreement with Google. You specifically agree not to access (or attempt to access) any of the Services through any automated means (including use of scripts or web crawlers) and shall ensure that you comply with the instructions set out in any robots.txt file present on the Services. So here's my question: If we’re using Google Spreadsheet APIs in order to automate the Google spreadsheet processes, does that violate the terms of service? Surely, the API is an interface given by Google itself, so it should be OK to use it to automate tasks? Here's what my developer told me: "Just to quickly clarify regarding the TOS, we’re using Google Spreadsheet APIs in order to process the data which is an interface given by Google itself. So there’s no issue on that front. We’ve been using these APIs for a lot of our other customers. Also if you see any ETL tools like Pentaho-Kettle or any other, they have separate extensions which use these APIs in order to fetch data from Google spreadsheets." Any thoughts on this? Any help would be much appreciated.
