Fred Oliveira brings up a very good point in his recent post about the current dependency on web services for many of the new applications being launched. This is definitely something to think about both as a developer and a user of these applications.
The companies which offer these services are not doing it out of the goodness of their collective hearts. They are doing it for increased mind share as well possible revenue being generated by ads or developer fees. If Google changed the data they offered via the Maps API, what do you think would happen to all these mash-ups? What if a developer had to pay if their application went over a certain number of requests? Or maybe ads would be required if you wanted to use it commercially in the same way Microsoft's Virtual Earth does it?
These concerns should be thought about by any application developer. If you are going to use a service, don't be so tightly coupled to it that any change would cause your application to choke. Have some sort of abstraction layer which hopefully shields your users from changes to the service or the service being down.
Posted by Josh at October 30, 2005 07:42 AM