I'm working on a project that interfaces with the the Youtube API. I've come across the two projects (1) gdata-java-client and (2) google-api-java-client.
The project's scopes (and names) are a bit confusing. It seems that google-api-java-client is a general purpose API for dealing with web data. In contrast, gdata-java-client handles google specific data (e.g., YouTube API). Is this a correct characterization?
If so, is gdata-java-client built on top of google-api-java-client?
The answer is probably simpler than you expect. :)
The google-api-java-client is a newer library from Google. It can access more APIs and runs on Android. It's still in beta, though. On the other hand, gdata-java-client is stable and more mature, but does not work on Android.
If you're using gdata APIs and you don't need to run on Android, I recommend you use the gdata-java-client library. If you need to run on Android, google-api-java-client