Problems accessing the new Google Web APIs from Python

[Simon Willison]

Google have just launched a new service - Google Web APIs - which allows 
developers to query the google search engine via SOAP for non-commercial 
use (you're allowed up to 1000 queries a day). To use the service you 
have to sign up for a license key (all they ask for is an e-mail address 
and password) and download the API package:

http://www.google.com/apis/

Anyway, I've been trying to get this working with Python (having never 
used SOAP before) and I'm having problems, but I'm not sure if it's 
their service going down or a problem with my code. I've grabbed the 
SOAP module from here:

http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/pywebsvcs/SOAPpy/

And I'm running the following code in the Python interactive prompt:

#######
import SOAP

key = 'my google license key here'
query = 'python'

s = SOAP.SOAPProxy("http://api.google.com/search/beta2")
r = s.doGoogleSearch(key, query, 0, 10, "false", "", "false", "", 
"latin1", "latin1")

Which results in the following error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#19>", line 1, in ?
    r = s.doGoogleSearch(key, query, 0, 10, "false", "", "false", "", 
"latin1", "latin1")
  File "C:\Python22\lib\SOAP.py", line 3607, in __call__
    return self.__r_call(*args, **kw)
  File "C:\Python22\lib\SOAP.py", line 3627, in __r_call
    self.__hd, self.__ma)
  File "C:\Python22\lib\SOAP.py", line 3536, in __call
    config = self.config)
  File "C:\Python22\lib\SOAP.py", line 3471, in call
    raise HTTPError(code, msg)
HTTPError: <HTTPError 500 Internal Server Error>
#######

Does this mean their web server is dead (from the load of all the 
enthusiastic developers trying out the new service) or am I just getting 
my SOAP usage wrong?

The example for using Perl that comes with the Web API package suggests 
getting the Perl SOAP::Lite package to load in the WSDL description file 
for the Web API before doing anything. As far as I could tell the Python 
SOAP module doesn't include support for WSDL (I may be wrong). Is this a 
likely cause of my problem?

Cheers,

Simon Willison