It came as a surprise yesterday, and admittedly a positive one. Ebay is announcing that they will stop charging developers for access to their APIs. Well it’s about time they got it, I say. Opening up their APIs means they’ll follow - even if late - the bandwagon of successful services that allow developers to build on top of, usually resulting in extremely useful stuff.

I’ve always said, and keep insisting on the idea that service openness is what gives a business leverage over another. By allowing 3rd parties, now for free, to build applications using the provided API functions means for two things:

• A plethora of new applications and websites using Ebay’s API will pop-up, which will eventually drive more people to their website, thus resulting in more sales and conversions
• They may end up getting fresh ideas on how to expose their auction information and, if they continue to be smart about it, learn from the things people are in fact using and build new business ways off of that data.

It is all about allowing other people to be creative and use their own ideas on your functions. The relationship benefits between site (or service) and developer is two-way. The site gets more sales, the developers get more to build cool stuff on. And if you don’t believe the preaching, think about why Flickr got so successful so fast.

Oh, and Edgeio (soon, very soon now!) is going to have loads of developer information because we “get it” too. Prepare to roll up those mashup and code sleeves.

And the funny thing is you still wonder why. Here’s the lowdown:

• I download your music because you manipulate your prices and people still can’t afford your overpriced CDs and DVDs.
• I download your music because I prefer to pay the artists by going to their concerts (they get far better shares that way).
• I download your music because it’s easier.
• I download your music because I’m not forced into your EULAs.
• I download your music because I don’t respect companies that don’t respect their customers.
• I download your music because even though I run Mac and Linux boxes, I don’t want to give money to a company that installs windows rootkits on other people’s PCs.
• I download your music because your music business model is wrong.
• I download your music because you don’t listen to the buyer.
• I download your music because I don’t want to go through 2 forms and a crap page to uninstall the spyware you install on my PC
• Truth is, I don’t download all your music because it’s not really that good most of the times.

Do you want to know the ironic bits? I produce music, I used to run a small label and I buy everything I really like from an artist - in fact, most my money is spent on things that are related to music (even if for you and the sake of this post I’m “just a computer addict” and “a blogger”). But I won’t buy more of your music because I just don’t like you. You won’t see more “music” money from me, and I will risk saying: ever.

Post-digg Update:

Apparently someone submitted this story to Digg and it’s been on the top of the homepage for a while, which explains the slow response times - let’s hope the host handles it. Now, some people have been commenting and emailing about whether it’s wrong to “steal music” or not. Yes, it is wrong to steal music. This is not about how right or wrong it is to download.

This is about the disrespect that a company like Sony shows for its consumers, by disregarding their privacy, installing spyware on their machines and imposing EULAs that say that, for example, should you go bankrupt, all your rights over your music are lost. This isn’t really the kind of people or policy I want to have releasing albums from my favorite artists.

Luckily, my favorite artists belong to Indie labels.

Related Link: Music Download Over 2 Million DRM free MP3 files for instant download - no registration, no signup!

So Google Local is now mobile too, and it’s around the blogosphere already. It seems like the prediction of the geolocation world of IT blending into our real-lives was spot on. Now google’s in our cellphones, and we have to wonder what the next step of integration will be - hopefully globalization, because GLM is US only for now and I could certainly make use of it here in Europe.

Now, there’s people who consider mobile devices as the endpoint for most technology and services being created today. While I don’t agree completely (for me, computers are the endpoint for most of the things I’m building), I must admit that the connection between mobile life and services is fascinating. Finding a “pool” in “San Francisco” or, as I needed badly (during my two months down in the Bay area) a “barbershop” in “Atherton, CA”, is now as easy as getting the cellphone out of the pocket and query the web.

I wonder how long it’ll take for other mapping and Local services to go mobile too - knowing the grounds, I’d say not long. Again we have to wonder, though, what extra bonus can the future services bring that make us ditch GLM and move to an alternative? We’ll see, I guess.

What I know I’d like to see though is new services that can improve our productivity and social lives using an object that also has the power to bring them down - obviously the cellphone. Developers need to get the tools in their hands to make this a reality - we’ll see how that goes.

Dave Winer speaks. Someone needs to listen. Let me quote what I believe is a genious paragraph from an inspiring essay:

Today, in late 2005, Google is still the leader in search, but either Yahoo or Microsoft, or even better — both — could leapfrog Google by allowing developers to build unlimited applications on their search engine. Or, if unlimited is not possible, make the limit practical for serious Internet applications, perhaps 1 million queries per day? Let’s work this out.

Read the full thing. If you’re a web developer, if you think you have something to contribute to what some call the “web 2.0″, this might just be it. The point is we don’t really need to wait for Microsoft or Yahoo to give the next step in the competition for the development of the web as platform - we can and should do it ourselves.

I still remember the last party we threw at Techcrunch where Dave keynoted and said “someone get out there and give google some competition”. I remember hearing someone behind me:

- Would you like to?
- Like to what?
- Throw down Google.
- Hell yes.

Go get them, is what I say.