I have been ranting about an icon set for the API community for over a year now. I want there to be more than just a set of SDK programming language icons. Something that would give us a visual API vocabulary, and allow us to plan, share, and implement API infrastructure like AWS is beginning to do with their own icon set, and their latest visual tooling for defining your architecture.
While profiling Google APIs, I'm seeing a pretty disorganized approach to logos beyond just core services, the absence of any dedicated icons that represent specific Google APIs. Amazon is pretty far ahead of the game when it comes visual iconography to represent the services they offer, and will dominate when it comes to visual life cycle tooling, unless Google, Microsoft, or some other provder begin to invest in meaningful icons.
Ideally, someone will do this in a more open source way, giving us the Schema.org for icons that represent cloud computing, machine learning, and the many other API driven resources being put to work today. Even if it is an open source solution, each service provider will have to be involved in some way, and invested in the process to some degree. I picture a world where API service providers like Zapier don't have to develop their own iconography, and there is a wealth of well thought out, and simply design icons for everyone to pick from.
What are you waiting for Google--get to work! ;-)
