URL: 403 permission denied.

Question

I am figuring out how to use the URL class to connect to web sites. I was able to get the Google page (among others) by specifying the web address, no problem. But a Google query that would work by pasting it in Internet Explorer fails when the same string is given to a URL constructor, so there must be more to the process than what I have done so far. For example, this works fine:
URL url = new URL("http://www.google.com");
InputStream inStream = url.openStream();
...but this causes an exception:
URL url = new URL("http://www.google.com/search?q=testing");
InputStream inStream = url.openStream();
The exception is "Error reading URL: java.io.IOException: Server returned HTTP response code: 403 for URL: http://www.google.com/search?q=testing"
It looks like doing an actual Google search instead of just reading a page must involve more steps and permissions. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Thanks!

Answer 1

Google forces you to use an API of theirs to run code against their database. You can get the API by going to http://www.google.com/apis/
A lot of search engines with the increasing numbers of spiders being created to run against their information have started to use this format or block applications from accessing their information all together.