4 ms·

Why do they need to apologize?

arcticfox 10y ago
Because they wasted people's time building on their platform? A successful API requires trust that it will continue, or there's no point in using it. Erode the trust, erode the power of the API publisher. Having been burned by Google API shutdowns before, I just don't use them any more. Obviously they're under no obligation to maintain APIs, but if they want people to keep using them for whatever reason, maintaining trust is important.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  And in this computer age, we have to suspect keeping an API available is just some cloud resource of negligible expense. Shutting them down may feed some Google manager's OCD impulse, but can't be saving any money.
  - aiiane 10y ago
    There is not just a computing resource cost involved - keeping an API around means continuing to support the quirks of that interface, which means code complexity and maintenance costs, especially when the system the API talked to gets refactored and/or overhauled. Google's internal refactoring strategy frequently relies heavily on a monolithic code repository and the ability to rebuild the world; the more that interfaces are unable to change the harder refactoring becomes.
    - asciimike 10y ago
      +1000 to this. The "API" that developers see is the tip of the iceberg for what actually goes into publicly exposing a service to developers. Yes there's quite a bit of internal maintenance that goes on (as mentioned, lots of things change frequently, though generally people refactoring chunks of code will "upgrade" your code for you, since if they don't they can't submit their changes since you were a good engineer and wrote defensive unit tests to protect your code). Maintaining a public API can also mean having: - Documentation (up to 15 languages) - Sample code/example apps (up to 7 languages) - Support (Stack Overflow, Quora, etc.) - An on-call rotation
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    Um, they are also planning to discontinue the consumer-focussed Google+ Hangouts user experience that the API allows building apps for; Hangouts is being pivoted to be an enterprise messenging product. This change in direction has been announced previously, and is referenced in their information on the API discontinuation. (And keeping a zombie API available without maintenance, which is non-neglible in cost, is in someways worse than discontinuing it even if the service it interacts with still exists.)

Because they wasted people's time building on their platform? A successful API requires trust that it will continue, or there's no point in using it. Erode the trust, erode the power of the API publisher. Having been burned by Google API shutdowns before, I just don't use them any more. Obviously they're under no obligation to maintain APIs, but if they want people to keep using them for whatever reason, maintaining trust is important.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
And in this computer age, we have to suspect keeping an API available is just some cloud resource of negligible expense. Shutting them down may feed some Google manager's OCD impulse, but can't be saving any money.
- aiiane 10y ago
  There is not just a computing resource cost involved - keeping an API around means continuing to support the quirks of that interface, which means code complexity and maintenance costs, especially when the system the API talked to gets refactored and/or overhauled. Google's internal refactoring strategy frequently relies heavily on a monolithic code repository and the ability to rebuild the world; the more that interfaces are unable to change the harder refactoring becomes.
  - asciimike 10y ago
    +1000 to this. The "API" that developers see is the tip of the iceberg for what actually goes into publicly exposing a service to developers. Yes there's quite a bit of internal maintenance that goes on (as mentioned, lots of things change frequently, though generally people refactoring chunks of code will "upgrade" your code for you, since if they don't they can't submit their changes since you were a good engineer and wrote defensive unit tests to protect your code). Maintaining a public API can also mean having: - Documentation (up to 15 languages) - Sample code/example apps (up to 7 languages) - Support (Stack Overflow, Quora, etc.) - An on-call rotation
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  Um, they are also planning to discontinue the consumer-focussed Google+ Hangouts user experience that the API allows building apps for; Hangouts is being pivoted to be an enterprise messenging product. This change in direction has been announced previously, and is referenced in their information on the API discontinuation. (And keeping a zombie API available without maintenance, which is non-neglible in cost, is in someways worse than discontinuing it even if the service it interacts with still exists.)