It's all well and good to say "never use a Google API again because they might eliminate for any reason at any time" but there might not be an alternative. It's

It's all well and good to say "never use a Google API again because they might eliminate for any reason at any time" but there might not be an alternative. It's hard to get the data. Concentration of data is made concentration of wealth through APIs (or, slightly more indirectly, through the apps that use the APIs, perhaps internally). No-one concentrates data more thoroughly than Google (it's hard to appreciate how much data Google has; it started with scraping the web, but now they have real-time data on millions of sites through analytics, pictures of streets, WiFi ssid against lat/lon, and of course detailed video-viewing habits). The short-term consumer cycle is feeding a long-term data cycle that strongly favors consolidation. That's bad. Personally I think it's okay to "feed the beast" for a little while, but as soon as you get uptake and can afford the time you can and should stop feeding the beast.