There is something here that I really don't understand.
Why would they want to shut it down?
With something like Twitter, I get it. In order to make money off their customers' use of Twitter's free service, they need to be in control of the customers' experience (so they can do things like show ads). So they pulled this intentional bait-and-switch where they screwed over the independent developers who had made Twitter successful in the first place, but they did it because they needed to in order to make their profits.
The Netflix API story is different. First of all, APIs were always an additional offering: Netflix was grown on the backs of their mail-order business and third party apps that could just as well have been done via partnerships instead of open APIs. So they're at least not screwing over the one who brought them to the dance.
But the APIs have been a source of good will from the developer community (probably all out of proportion to the number of actual tools built using them). And the APIs are not harming Netflix's income stream in any way. (They might, in a tiny way, be helping, but I accept that this effect is negligible.) So where is the motivation to retire them?
Does it really cost so much to maintain the APIs? After all, they need to maintain them for Instant Watcher, Fanhattan, Yidio, NextGuide, Flixster, Can I Stream It?, FeedFliks, and Instant Watch Browser for Netflix. So it's not like they'll save the cost of keeping the APIs running. And I don't see how this can be about the cost of managing communications with the public -- if, instead of announcing that the APIs were now closing down, Netflix had announced that the primary support channel was now a public forum where users could help each other I doubt anyone would have batted an eyelash.
It's probably about reducing maintenance costs. The public API is implemented by software which calls internal Netflix services/APIs. Over time, those services accrue technical debt and need to be refactored or rewritten. Every system that uses those internal services needs to be updated to match.
A published API makes this more difficult. The behavior of published APIs, particularly those that are in wide use, can not change in any way without raising the ire of developers. This restricts the internal refactoring you can do and makes the whole exercise (already complicated enough) even more challenging.
Working with a small, curated list of apps means that they can coordinate with developers on API changes rather than worrying about maintaining compatibility. This lowers their maintenance costs and increases their architectural agility.
> With something like Twitter, I get it. In order to make money off their customers' use of Twitter's free service, they need to be in control of the customers' experience (so they can do things like show ads)
Twitter didn't need to close the API to make sure ads were shown they just needed to make sure API developers knew there were certain messages they weren't allowed to block. The whole control the experience is a poor excuse for killing an ecosystem that got the company to where it was.
Netflix over-complicates EVERYTHING. And not just because they are big business with a lot of crap to take care of. They do so because they want to have great up-time and slick services across as many devices as possible. Not just one browser and one run-time, like, every android device, every mobile device, every internet-connected game console.
And if you know anything about the way Netflix architects their dev process, you know about the Chaos Monkeys.
So I think, they just decided it was too much work to maintain, on top of everything else, with little feedback. And probably someone was abusing it as well, which equates to more work/maintenance.
Their Dos/Don'ts page shows they were pretty strict about usage of this 'open' api:
So I can totally imagine them thinking this was just too much work to maintain. Its a bit sad, yeah, but, there's not really much value it provided anyone in the first place, there's only so many things you can do with lists of movies owned by Netflix.
Why would they want to shut it down?
With something like Twitter, I get it. In order to make money off their customers' use of Twitter's free service, they need to be in control of the customers' experience (so they can do things like show ads). So they pulled this intentional bait-and-switch where they screwed over the independent developers who had made Twitter successful in the first place, but they did it because they needed to in order to make their profits.
The Netflix API story is different. First of all, APIs were always an additional offering: Netflix was grown on the backs of their mail-order business and third party apps that could just as well have been done via partnerships instead of open APIs. So they're at least not screwing over the one who brought them to the dance.
But the APIs have been a source of good will from the developer community (probably all out of proportion to the number of actual tools built using them). And the APIs are not harming Netflix's income stream in any way. (They might, in a tiny way, be helping, but I accept that this effect is negligible.) So where is the motivation to retire them?
Does it really cost so much to maintain the APIs? After all, they need to maintain them for Instant Watcher, Fanhattan, Yidio, NextGuide, Flixster, Can I Stream It?, FeedFliks, and Instant Watch Browser for Netflix. So it's not like they'll save the cost of keeping the APIs running. And I don't see how this can be about the cost of managing communications with the public -- if, instead of announcing that the APIs were now closing down, Netflix had announced that the primary support channel was now a public forum where users could help each other I doubt anyone would have batted an eyelash.
So help me out here: what is the motivation?