Good points. I agree that there are important lessons to learn, but I wouldn't say that there is a big disincentive just yet. A powerful (open) platform is attractive because it brings to light new opportunities. The lesson would be not to sit idle afterwards. A successful mashup/product proves that there exists a market; a starutp with foresight will develop themselves fully enough as to not fully rely on the API. As you said, it's R&D for the platform companies, and they can dominate the startup's space if the startup doesn't keep iterating.
Even though YouTube was not built on a Google platform, there're some parallels to be drawn. Google had a video service; YouTube was better. With their advantage in size and resources, Google could have put out something better, but YouTube had such a lead already. True, YouTube didn't have to rely on Google's API, but even Statsaholic is continuing on without Amazon's Alexa.
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Good points. I agree that there are important lessons to learn, but I wouldn't say that there is a big disincentive just yet. A powerful (open) platform is attractive because it brings to light new opportunities. The lesson would be not to sit idle afterwards. A successful mashup/product proves that there exists a market; a starutp with foresight will develop themselves fully enough as to not fully rely on the API. As you said, it's R&D for the platform companies, and they can dominate the startup's space if the startup doesn't keep iterating.
Even though YouTube was not built on a Google platform, there're some parallels to be drawn. Google had a video service; YouTube was better. With their advantage in size and resources, Google could have put out something better, but YouTube had such a lead already. True, YouTube didn't have to rely on Google's API, but even Statsaholic is continuing on without Amazon's Alexa.