This week at SXSW and in the weeks prior to the event, we’ve seen how APis are becoming ways for providers to wield a level of control that causes new concerns about how this technology can create a form of provider monopoly.
It’s evident when you begin to explore services and the types of APIs that they use. In a recent post, we wrote about Food and Drink APIs. Of the services classified in this category on Programmable Web, more than 80% use Google’s Geolocation API.
In a video interview we did at SXSW, SimpleGeo’s Matt Galligan discussed the issues that come with dominance. There becomes just one truth. That is also true of monopolies.
At SXSW this past week, Twitter’s Ryan Sarver said that the company is discouraging providers from using the API to create clients based upon the service.
Sure, API providers may do as they wish. They are the creators of the technology and enjoy certain rights that they set.
But what happens when one service is dominant and wields that power accordingly? Is this a new form of a monopoly?
