It&#x27;s all well and good to say &quot;never use a Google API again because they might eliminate for any reason at any time&quot; but there might not <i>be</i> an alternative. It&#x27;s hard to get the data. Concentration of data is made concentration of wealth through APIs (or, slightly more indirectly, through the apps that use the APIs, perhaps internally). No-one concentrates data more thoroughly than Google (it&#x27;s hard to appreciate how much data Google has; it started with scraping the web, but now they have real-time data on millions of sites through analytics, pictures of streets, WiFi ssid against lat&#x2F;lon, and of course detailed video-viewing habits).<p>The short-term consumer cycle is feeding a long-term data cycle that strongly favors consolidation. That&#x27;s bad. Personally I think it&#x27;s okay to &quot;feed the beast&quot; for a little while, but as soon as you get uptake and can afford the time you can and should stop feeding the beast.