Today at the Web 2.0 summit, Vic Gundotra said that Google wants to give access to outside developers slowly, and is working on developing its API’s for services like Google+.
About its API’s, Gundotra said that the company doesn’t want to do anything “rash” by putting out API’s that they’d have to roll back and upset the developer community.
As we know, Google+ has only released a read-only API to date, which has caused the developer community to ask for more. Having a full API for Google+ could increase usage and adoption of the service, bug Google is clearly in no rush, and would rather do things right the first time.
Twitter is both a shining example and a cautionary tale when it comes to opening up your service to third party developers. Twitter saw massive adoption thanks to apps created using its API, but also saw slowness and platform issues because of it as well. Twitter has since pulled back full access to its API, putting many apps and services out of business. Google is clearly taking cues from Twitter’s experience.
Gundotra also shared that Google+ is great for families, and his family in particular are quick adopters of the messaging features integrated into the service.
On openness and accessibility, Gundotra was asked about brand pages on Google+, and says the company is “overwhelmed” by requests for the service, but doesn’t give a date for release. He does say that Google has some surprises in store for brands on Google+.
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