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Comment by orillian | Hacker News Reader

I refuse to build anything that uses Google API's for this exact reason, They could pull the plug on gmail next week if they decided they were not getting enough metrics from it.

Look at what happened to the translate API. How about the licencing changes to Google maps API. They build something like this and if they can't find a way to generate more money (maps API) it gets shut down(translate, now reader.), even if a bunch of people use it. And by a bunch I mean a small collective of tech people.

I would not be surprised to see Google Groups get munched once they finish adding a few more features into the communities bag.

I do use gmail, I have multiple accounts in fact, but I backup everything locally that I think might be valuable to me in the future...just in case.

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> I would not be surprised to see Google Groups get munched once they finish adding a few more features into the communities bag.

I would say that this is probably firmly in motion. I doubt that many users enjoy using the Groups interface. For instance, I can't remember if there was ever a time that the groups webpage correctly rendered on any of my Android devices' browsers (it always thinks I'm using an old version of Safari?!?), or was actually useful outside of a desktop (where it is merely annoying, but usable). I think this is a good indicator that they are divesting from any work there probably in preparation of dropping it.

> I backup everything locally that I think might be valuable to me in the future...just in case.

One thing I absolutely trust Google to do is provide a mechanism to get my data out of one of their services, particularly if the service is going to be discontinued.

I'd also like to add: Google Web Search REST, Google Web Search JSON, Image Search, Code Search, Feedburner's API, and some 30+ others that I _don't_ have a personal interest in, but I'm sure were used by many others.

While it's great to have all this stuff in one place when it's all supported, it quickly turns bitter once Google becomes the only player in a market only to pull out suddenly.

I have to agree with you here. For both customer work and some of my own projects I need a search API and a translate API. I went with the Microsoft APIs because I thought Microsoft would be less likely to "pull the rug."

FWIW Google Reader never had an official API, just a hacked up reverse-engineered unofficial API which everyone took to using.

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