How to use the Google APIs

Google publish Application Program Interfaces for a number of their products. For advanced programmers these can be invaluable tools to provide "hooks" into the Google Apps. If you want to access data, within reason and in line with what Google want you to access, from the Google world you can do this via an API.

The Google API for Analytics are a bit of an "overkill" for this website. From what I have concluded about Google Analytics there is little that I can gain from having a "hook" into the reporting mechanism.

For those that have websites and apps that require Google Maps, Drive, gMail or other information from Google to enhance their operation, the use of the APIs maybe useful. For example, we all now familiar with delivery tracking and store location, especially in Covid lockdown. The location of your delivery is often updated in real-time and you can see where the package is and when it is likely to be delivered. This information is made possible by "hooks" into the Goople Maps API.

jQuery and Bootstrap use googleapis

The following is included on pages where jQuery or the Bootstrap Framework is used:

What Google say about their Analytics Reporting API:

The Google Maps API:

Having not looked into this in depth I am not really sure what can be achieved here. Reading the Google introduction to the Maps API there seems to be support to add custom mapping to your website or app. I would also imagine that Google are also using this for their own marketing and offer the ability for a business to appear on Google Maps and Google Earth.

While I don't have a problem with this I am not sure whether it is understood by the Internet user who may wonder how a company is shown on the map and there is no local knowledge of its existance.