A new method, Search#utf8, allows the user to request conversion of query strings from a given source encoding to UTF-8 prior to sending them to Google. Previous versions of the library had started to fail. It's not clear if changes made to the Google Web API caused this issue. The code has been slightly modified to fix the problem.
Google's WSDL file is now utilized, thanks to the addition of a WSDL driver. Methods no longer need to be defined manually, resulting in simpler, briefer code.
Google::Search now deprecates use of the oe and ie parameters, in line with changes made by Google to the Web API on 30th August 2002. If Ruby is run in verbose mode and either of these parameters is used, a warning will be issued.