Google's API

Mediapost reports that Google is about to start charging for use of the AdWords API. Steve Rubel comments that "if charging for API data becomes more widespread among the big players, it will slow innovation". All perfectly true - so many recent innovations are based on mash-ups and if Google extends this approach to maps, for example, a lot of rather lovely innovations are going to fall over.

For me, what's most remarkable about this is that Google is apparently planning to charge a fee on the basis of use - 25 cents per 1,000 calls on the API. This isn't the smartest thing Google could do. Charging users a nominal percentage of revenues from mash-up sites created using Google APIs would be smart. That would continue to foster innovation because start-ups could implement Google-based products without any initial risk, but would have to share a slice of the revenue pie with Google once there was a pie to talk about. Set the percentage sufficiently low and perhaps no-one would mind paying Google for their contribution, once the revenues started flowing.

But a flat fee for use is so...unGoogle. It's like charging a CPM rate for advertising on a website or a flat fee for advertising in a newspaper. Possibly the logistics of doing it any other way were looked at, and rejected as impossible or onerous or in some other way undesirable. However at first glance this is the exact opposite of the approach that made such a great success of Google's practically only revenue-generating, performance-based venture - AdWords itself.