Developers that build products on top of APIs controlled by other companies, particularly recent startups, are routinely abused. The upside of these products is unnaturally clipped due to moral hazard on the part of the API provider. That is, closed APIs incentivize their providers to farm out testing new products based on their data set to others, then reimplement the most successful products themselves, and finally cut off access to the developer because it's now a 'competitor'. This pattern has (allegedly) played out with several of the big closed API providers.
This behavior has a double benefit to the API provider, because it potentially turns would be direct competitors who would otherwise work on an alternative to its core technology if not provided with an API into unpaid new product idea validators that leave the API provider the option of crippling their product at will. That's a lot of competitive advantage, especially in markets dominated by network and first mover effects.
As a developer, it's prudent to be skeptical of closed API providers, because developer time is valuable, and the incentives of API providers and consumers are not aligned.
An API has to be extremely valuable in order to overcome these structural issues, and it appears that developers didn't regard these APIs as sufficiently valuable. So in my mind, the blame for this failure doesn't lie with the developers that failed to use the APIs, but with the company that didn't provide a sufficiently attractive API.
This behavior has a double benefit to the API provider, because it potentially turns would be direct competitors who would otherwise work on an alternative to its core technology if not provided with an API into unpaid new product idea validators that leave the API provider the option of crippling their product at will. That's a lot of competitive advantage, especially in markets dominated by network and first mover effects.
As a developer, it's prudent to be skeptical of closed API providers, because developer time is valuable, and the incentives of API providers and consumers are not aligned.
An API has to be extremely valuable in order to overcome these structural issues, and it appears that developers didn't regard these APIs as sufficiently valuable. So in my mind, the blame for this failure doesn't lie with the developers that failed to use the APIs, but with the company that didn't provide a sufficiently attractive API.