In a posting on its Code blog, Google has announced that in order to help protect users' data it is to start requiring the use of SSL security in a broader range range of products than at present. In particular, increased support for SSL will be added to the Google APIs for use by developers of third party applications. Currently, SSL is already used by Google's technical documentation, client libraries and code sample, but in future, "Many new APIs and versions will be SSL only."

Users are likely to be familiar with the use of SSL in Gmail, and addition last year of optionally using SSL when performing a Google search. In future, all API requests for Google Documents List, Google Spreadsheets and Google Sites will have to use secure connections. From 15 September 2011, all such requests will be rejected if they use standard HTTP rather than HTTPS. Developers using the latest versions of the Google Data client libraries will need take no further action, as those libraries use SSL for all API requests. But developers not using the Google libraries will need to change all relevant URLs.

Google suggests that developers convert all their client applications as soon as possible, and refers them to the relevant documentation, in particular, the recently updated API documentation for Google Documents List, Google Spreadsheets and Google Sites .

Source: H-Online.com