I stopped really looking at APIs ever since Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. started restricting the usefulness and access to them. Its been a long time since

I stopped really looking at APIs ever since Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. started restricting the usefulness and access to them. Its been a long time since I really thought about building any business on quicksand. Now a days when I use an external API, I make sure it is not core to the product. If the relationship changes with the external provider, I need an escape that does not impact my product. Which means of course that the external API cannot be "essential" - and in startup land "not essential" == "do not do"