Announcing the People API

The People API, announced by Google in February 2016, provides developers with a streamlined way to access data about a user's contacts and social connections, replacing the older Contacts API that used the GData protocol. By consolidating data from multiple sources, the new API offers enhanced features, such as access to private addresses, phone numbers, emails, and birthdays, provided the user has granted the necessary permissions. Built on HTTP and JSON, the People API allows any standard HTTP client to send requests and parse responses, but requires authorization through the Google Developers Console to obtain the necessary credentials. With the People API, developers can retrieve a list of user connections in a unified format and access additional data about each contact using the resourceName property. This innovation aims to inspire the creation of advanced web and mobile applications by simplifying access to a rich set of user data.