5 ms·

> The competitive advantages of owning both the application and the data are so high Honestly this is wrong. Google drive has API for everything, Notion is wor

by polote 6y ago

> The competitive advantages of owning both the application and the data are so high Honestly this is wrong. Google drive has API for everything, Notion is working on an API, Confluence has API for everything, Trello ... Any serious text editor (and all the ones wrongly cited in the article) software has API for everything. Want to export your Confluence data to Notion ? you can. In the documentation tools space owning the data is not something looked for, because company pay for the service so the data belong to them BYOC can exists today, the only reason it doesn't. Is that the documents format is super complex and require complex editors. But the format themselves are not secret, the application is (and not even always, for example the Confluence editor is open source).

draw_down 6y ago
Look at what happened with Twitter and its third party clients. GP is correct. (I'm not saying it's good and I like it, I'm saying it makes sense)
MichaelApproved 6y ago
Those APIs are not meant for building a full blown dedicated clients, they’re for application integrations.
- polote 6y ago
  Check that https://developers.google.com/docs/api/reference/rest/v1/documents https://developers.google.com/docs/api/reference/rest/v1/doc... You have the full specification of Google docs documents and API to edit any kind of blocks inside
  - MichaelApproved 6y ago
    First, that’s not the full spec for Google docs. It’s missing many aspects of the environment. Second, is that meant for building a full blown client or is it meant for 3rd party integrations, like plugins?
    - polote 6y ago
      > It’s missing many aspects of the environment. I'm curious of what is missing > Second, is that meant for building a full blown client or is it meant for 3rd party integrations, like plugins? It is certainly not for plugins, as there libraries to call that API from python, ruby and others which are then not meant to be run in the browser. My point, is that if you want to build an editor of Google Docs, then you can do it, there is an API to get the doc format and an api to make modification to that document
      - MichaelApproved 6y ago
        > I'm curious of what is missing My initial response was related to missing comments and collaborative real-time editing in the v1 link you provided. However, I searched a bit more and found that their newer API versions include both of those features.[1] Here's a blog that's announcing their real-time collaborative editing[2] back in 2013, so that's been there for a while. That blog post also lists a few products that make use of the real-time feature but the only client that's an actual editor ("Neutron Drive") has since died with its domains no longer working. I guess this is one of the rare cases where you can build a client based on their API and Google actually promoted one of them but I'd still say that it's not really meant for it. The primary use case for these APIs are bot services like Zapier and integrating a "Save to cloud folder" feature in your own app. Even if they actively encouraged you to build a client based on their API, who would risk it? We've seen how Twitter handled 3rd party clients after it got big and that's likely going to be the case with every major player. [1] https://developers.google.com/drive/api/v3/manage-comments https://developers.google.com/drive/api/v3/manage-comments [2] https://developers.googleblog.com/2013/03/build-collaborative-apps-with-google.html https://developers.googleblog.com/2013/03/build-collaborativ...
zolland 6y ago
You touch on an important point here. Even if you were able to gain full access to the data behind say Confluence, the schema is probably very specialized to their client, contains lots of tech debt, and design is probably very opinionated. You would most likely find it easier to just write your own schema rather than integrate with theirs.

by polote 6y ago

draw_down 6y ago

Look at what happened with Twitter and its third party clients. GP is correct. (I'm not saying it's good and I like it, I'm saying it makes sense)

MichaelApproved 6y ago

Those APIs are not meant for building a full blown dedicated clients, they’re for application integrations.

polote 6y ago
Check that https://developers.google.com/docs/api/reference/rest/v1/documents https://developers.google.com/docs/api/reference/rest/v1/doc... You have the full specification of Google docs documents and API to edit any kind of blocks inside
- MichaelApproved 6y ago
  First, that’s not the full spec for Google docs. It’s missing many aspects of the environment. Second, is that meant for building a full blown client or is it meant for 3rd party integrations, like plugins?
  - polote 6y ago
    > It’s missing many aspects of the environment. I'm curious of what is missing > Second, is that meant for building a full blown client or is it meant for 3rd party integrations, like plugins? It is certainly not for plugins, as there libraries to call that API from python, ruby and others which are then not meant to be run in the browser. My point, is that if you want to build an editor of Google Docs, then you can do it, there is an API to get the doc format and an api to make modification to that document
    - MichaelApproved 6y ago
      > I'm curious of what is missing My initial response was related to missing comments and collaborative real-time editing in the v1 link you provided. However, I searched a bit more and found that their newer API versions include both of those features.[1] Here's a blog that's announcing their real-time collaborative editing[2] back in 2013, so that's been there for a while. That blog post also lists a few products that make use of the real-time feature but the only client that's an actual editor ("Neutron Drive") has since died with its domains no longer working. I guess this is one of the rare cases where you can build a client based on their API and Google actually promoted one of them but I'd still say that it's not really meant for it. The primary use case for these APIs are bot services like Zapier and integrating a "Save to cloud folder" feature in your own app. Even if they actively encouraged you to build a client based on their API, who would risk it? We've seen how Twitter handled 3rd party clients after it got big and that's likely going to be the case with every major player. [1] https://developers.google.com/drive/api/v3/manage-comments https://developers.google.com/drive/api/v3/manage-comments [2] https://developers.googleblog.com/2013/03/build-collaborative-apps-with-google.html https://developers.googleblog.com/2013/03/build-collaborativ...

zolland 6y ago

You touch on an important point here. Even if you were able to gain full access to the data behind say Confluence, the schema is probably very specialized to their client, contains lots of tech debt, and design is probably very opinionated. You would most likely find it easier to just write your own schema rather than integrate with theirs.