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There seems to be a trend emerging where companies/organistions are killing off APIs with no warning, and the consumer of the API is powerless.

I blogged about this recently http://andysinclair.wordpress.com/2010/10/25/your-api-killed... as I was very annoyed that TFL (London's transport network) disabled one of their APIs which stopped 2 very popular iPhone applications from working.

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Could this be because of the change of government? The new government is dismantling all sorts of other central government internet projects - perhaps the data providers who were being pressured into making their feeds available are spotting a change in the political climate and a chance to keep the profits in-house.

I'm not so sure, I think it more a case of lots of these APIs and open data projects exist as "side projects" and do not receive the full backing and resources of the department/organisation.

I followed up the story of TFL and it turns out that the API stopped working because of a security patch that was applied, rather than more sinister reasons.

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