On January 1, 2027 Google will be retiring its Custom Search JSON API, the long-standing way for developers to get Google search results as JSON. The API is already closed to new signups; after January 1, 2027 existing integrations will stop working as well. Google will point developers to one of three alternatives, including Agent Search under the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform. But this is already a rebrand of the product (Vertex AI Search) that Google recommended only three months earlier.
If you’re confused, you’re not alone. A dev following Google’s path today will encounter three names for one product: “Agent Search” in the docs, “Vertex AI Search” in the console, and “Discovery Engine” in the API (and the URL slug is still generative-ai-app-builder, a fourth name). This highlights the instability of relying on a Big Tech company with the conflicting goals of owning both AI search and your AI development. For such critical infrastructure as AI and agent search, Google is putting many companies in a difficult and overly complex position.
Whether you’re an app developer or looking to power your agents, if you need a drop-in alternative to the Google Search API, the Brave Search API covers the same use cases (such as site search, AI grounding, and full-Web search) with self-serve JSON endpoints and even cleaner data. It also includes a dedicated LLM Context endpoint built for agents and chatbots—no Google (and no Google scraping) required.
