Is this any way to shut down an API?

9 points by abraae 7y ago ↗ HN

From the shutdown announcement of the Google+ APIs:

> On March 7, 2019, all Google+ APIs and Google+ Sign-in will be shut down completely. This will be a progressive shutdown beginning in late January, with calls to these APIs starting to intermittently fail as early as January 28, 2019.

3 comments

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eindiran 7y ago ↗

I'm not sure I understand what you are asking. From Google's perspective, to shut down the API is simple: they just need to stop serving the requests they get to the API and that will shut it down.

If you are asking how to responsibly shut down an API, that is a hard thing to do. Having the API start failing intermittently a bit more than a month after you announce it won't be supported any longer is definitely not the right way to do it though. Giving people plenty of advanced warning is the least you can do, even if you technically _can_ shutdown the API whenever you feel like it.

Varcht 7y ago ↗

Maybe if you are young this seems harsh but most of us are used to google just suddenly turning things off. Was anyone actually using these?

jvvlimme 7y ago ↗

You're mainly talking about the progressive shutdown?

I think it makes perfect sense. It makes teams that didn't get the shutdown notice aware of it in an acute way and encourages them to take action without putting them on the spot.