Often an API is a subset of search. Anytime a user of the API
gets a list of items back matching some criteria, it might
be a search query written as an API call. One can often
turn search queries into an API call. For example, give me objects that were created on day X (date: xx/yy/zzzz).
So some API calls have a corresponding search query.
Search is a desired/required feature
If users want to search some criteria to
display, debug or measure datasets, then they may want a search
API. It's better to have the search API early to leverage it later on,
when it's worthwile.
One search API vs many equivalent API calls
One can reduce many equivalent API calls to a single
search API. One still needs typing for the search result
objects and potentially transforming objects from a serialized
form to a reified form (e.g. bytes -> plain old objects).