Ericsson once had around 19 APIs available via their Ericsson Labs platform. After doing a round of looking through all the APIs I track on, I noticed they have ALL gone away. They are still doing a lot of research, but they seem to have lost their interest in APIs all together.
I have no problem with experimentation and playing around with different resources, and even the deprecation of APIs, with appropriate communication, when it makes sense. I know Ericsson exploration is via their labs, and isn't really meant for production, but it grinds on me when there are APIs be played with, then all of sudden one day they are gone, with no trace.
If you are experimenting with APIs, I recommend leaving some sort of landing page behind, with some trace of the exhaust from your research, experimentation--if possible open source your work. You put APIs out there and expect developers to come, play and give you feedback with no compensation—the least you can do is leave some of that research or assetts behind for the industry to put to use, or at least for us to understand that this has occurred at some point in time.
I don't know why your API initiatives didn’t work or were closed down, but I think in general it leaves a bad taste in developers mouths--I know it sure does in mine. Experimentation and iteration is fine, but if you want the public to care about your research in the future, leave some of the exhaust from your research behind, so we can derive meaning and value fromit. If nothing else, just a landing page that explains what happened, otherwise we wil stop giving a shit in the future and are unlikely to participate.
