My guess is Google setup these APIs to help train their learning algorithms. Now that they are trained there's no reason to keep up the service anymore. Maybe the key is to stay away from APIs that do work and don't contribute to revenue?
Static analysis of lots of human translators' output. Given the input and output of a strange human filter, they're trying to approximate the filter using machine learning. When their algorithm's output approximates the best translations, they're done.
That's one way to train a translation system, but that's not related to the Translate API -- I'm asking, what benefit does Google receive from usage of the API? They already have the entire Internet in their index -- it's not like they need a better source of what phrases exist. The parent implied that Google was using the API to train their MT systems, which I find hard to believe.
GOOG-411 is an example of this process. Google got voice samples and users got a service. When the voice training parameters stopped getting better the service was shut off.
