Why require user authentication in search v1.1?

[sperte]

… I mean, I understand why, I do. But this is a broad stroke that cuts off all ‘userless’ experiences, even for ‘safe’ quadrant apps/contexts. For web apps that currently make use of search v1, is there anything we can do? It’s going to be hard for us to go to our corporate customers and tell them we can no longer provide them with a ‘logged out experience’ for their audience.

[episod]

User auth is required for all 1.1 methods right now until a form of userless authorization is provided (no current ETA). Search will likely be among the methods offering this form of auth.

But the way to properly scale your usage of any of our APIs is going to be to leverage user authentication so that each of your users has their own rate limit.

[sperte]

For sure, we plan to ‘strongly encourage’ user authentication. But that’s a monumental barrier to entry if it’s required for usage.

Is there any way around this? Would becoming a certified partner circumvent the need to require user auth?