Paul Prescod wrote an article suggesting that Google might have made a mistake in basing its new Web Service API on SOAP.

Sam Ruby thinks different.

Mark Pilgrim, the voice of common sense as usual, points out that all existing Web Services are pioneers. Have a go with all the web service protocols, 'cos a de-facto standard won't arise for a while yet.

The effbot, meanwhile, has his own opinion.

Joel also has his opinion on this, in which he claims that "the trend is away from variant-bound scripting languages (VBScript, PHP, perl) towards typed code (C#, JSP).". See here for why I think (and certainly hope) that he's wrong.