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Why should anyone ever use a Google API again?

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Re: Why should anyone ever use a Google API again?

#81

Post by nikcub »

wccrawford wrote: post #7

You mean, why should you build a for-profit product while relying on someone else's not-for-profit API? I'm guessing you shouldn't! I've seen a lot of neat projects come from Google APIs, but that's as far as I'd taking it. Relying on someone else's good will for the lifeblood of your company is insane. 1 exception, though: Getting started. I could see using Google to get off the ground and then switching to a more r…

If Microsoft did this with the Windows API ten years ago people would be going absolutely batshit crazy in here and the government probably would have intervened

Re: Why should anyone ever use a Google API again?

#82

Post by orblivion »

chc wrote: post #60
orblivion wrote: post #24

Google shuts down several of countless, FREE APIs, on which the foundations of many startups rest. "Google is just another company who doesn't care about developers." What? A little gratitude, at least, before suggesting how things could be better.

Gratitude for what? Ripping out "the foundations of many startups"? In many cases, offering something and then rescinding at the last minute is worse than not offering in the first place. (I'm not personally mad and wouldn't have built a business around this API. But creating false expectations is not a good thing.)

That's reasonable, but I think it's sortof unclassy to ignore the fact that they "cared" (as much as a company can really care) enough to offer it in the first place, and everything else they still offer.

On the other hand I'm having mixed feelings now, trying to reconcile this with the way I feel about how Facebook's privacy policy affects users. I just don't get the impression that Google is careless the same way.

Re: Why should anyone ever use a Google API again?

#83

Post by r00fus »

orblivion wrote: post #24

Google shuts down several of countless, FREE APIs, on which the foundations of many startups rest. "Google is just another company who doesn't care about developers." What? A little gratitude, at least, before suggesting how things could be better.

The problem is not that google is shutting down some of it's free APIs.

Many folks are crying out for a paid version of the Translate API for example.

I question the motive behind shuttering a useful and unparalleled API like translate without considering putting a pricetag on it.

Re: Why should anyone ever use a Google API again?

#84

Post by fragsworth »

ellyagg wrote: post #75
wccrawford wrote: post #7

You mean, why should you build a for-profit product while relying on someone else's not-for-profit API? I'm guessing you shouldn't! I've seen a lot of neat projects come from Google APIs, but that's as far as I'd taking it. Relying on someone else's good will for the lifeblood of your company is insane. 1 exception, though: Getting started. I could see using Google to get off the ground and then switching to a more r…

Right. And this same argument means you should not rely on, for example, gmail, for your email. This is good advice for people in general, although perhaps not something google wants to hear, as they generally market themselves as someone you can trust. Obviously, google will let you down in exactly the same way that, say, apple or microsoft or facebook will. The pain for some people might be greater in this case, si…

No, the argument was that you shouldn't build a for-profit business that relies entirely on a good-will free API.

Even if you have a business with all of your employees on free gmail, you hardly rely on gmail, because you can probably switch to some other email system without going out of business.

Additionally, gmail is not even really a "good-will free" API. Advertisements more than make up for the costs.

Re: Why should anyone ever use a Google API again?

#85

Post by nhoj »

bad_user wrote: post #46
wccrawford wrote: post #7

You mean, why should you build a for-profit product while relying on someone else's not-for-profit API? I'm guessing you shouldn't! I've seen a lot of neat projects come from Google APIs, but that's as far as I'd taking it. Relying on someone else's good will for the lifeblood of your company is insane. 1 exception, though: Getting started. I could see using Google to get off the ground and then switching to a more r…

Google's App Engine is pretty much a for-profit API. And now they've announced a change in their pricing scheme, which if true, would change App Engine from pay-what-you-use to same-as-amazon-aws-but-pricier scheme, which makes it hugely expensive for a large portion of devs that have built on top of App Engine. And migrating away from App Engine is a total pain in the ass. I truly hope that the blog-post missed impo…

I never liked app engine. To me it seemed like you have to lock yourself into google as a vendor because your application has to be designed for app engine.

Re: Why should anyone ever use a Google API again?

#86

Post by saraid216 »

qq66 wrote: post #13
jmathai wrote: post #2

I can't state this enough. Building your company which heavily relies on an API provided by someone else is risky business. Why are we still in this infatuation stage of ignoring the pitfalls of this?

I think relying on a free API is the problem, not any API. When you pay per request for access to an API, at a level that can make the provider as well as you profitable, you can have some comfort in the fact that if your provider goes down there will likely be a competitor to spring up in its place.

It depends on how much of your revenue is based off access to the API. Every moment without access is lost revenue; that can break a startup.

If your startup could survive if you switched off the API, then you're fine.

Re: Why should anyone ever use a Google API again?

#87

Post by digitallogic »

nikcub wrote: post #81
wccrawford wrote: post #7

You mean, why should you build a for-profit product while relying on someone else's not-for-profit API? I'm guessing you shouldn't! I've seen a lot of neat projects come from Google APIs, but that's as far as I'd taking it. Relying on someone else's good will for the lifeblood of your company is insane. 1 exception, though: Getting started. I could see using Google to get off the ground and then switching to a more r…

If Microsoft did this with the Windows API ten years ago people would be going absolutely batshit crazy in here and the government probably would have intervened

They did a little shy of ten years ago with VB6. People did indeed go batshit, but the government did not get involved.

Re: Why should anyone ever use a Google API again?

#88

Post by rbranson »

If they feel as if they can only launch APIs that have indefinite lifetimes, this will seriously hamper their ability to justify building new public APIs. Deprecation is a risk taken anytime software is built on an API, for-profit or not. This is why software should be characterized as "living" and not a static entity.

Re: Why should anyone ever use a Google API again?

#89

Post by [deleted] »

chc wrote: post #56
jmathai wrote: post #2

I can't state this enough. Building your company which heavily relies on an API provided by someone else is risky business. Why are we still in this infatuation stage of ignoring the pitfalls of this?

You mean like .NET? Or Cocoa Touch? Or DOM? Or Node? Or POSIX? At some point, we're all relying on APIs provided by somebody else. I think that's why it's so easy for people to ignore the pitfalls of just a little bit more.

[deleted]

Re: Why should anyone ever use a Google API again?

#90

Post by GoodIntentions »

chc wrote: post #56
jmathai wrote: post #2

I can't state this enough. Building your company which heavily relies on an API provided by someone else is risky business. Why are we still in this infatuation stage of ignoring the pitfalls of this?

You mean like .NET? Or Cocoa Touch? Or DOM? Or Node? Or POSIX? At some point, we're all relying on APIs provided by somebody else. I think that's why it's so easy for people to ignore the pitfalls of just a little bit more.

umm, no one can shut down POSIX. not really a comparison.
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