So yeah…

eBay are finally opening up their API’s eh? No more charges on developers looking to access them. Good news for certain projects? Good news for certain developers? Or have eBay finally woken up to the realisation that allowing that extra openness is just good for business.

The upside for eBay?

• More sales, more conversions, more exposure…
• New ideas, new business opportunities for the great marketplace that is!

The downside? Well, I’m not sure if its a downside at all but it does mean for certain that there’s gonna be an awful lot of new auction sites popping up – but its all good for eBay. They’ve enough money to throw around these days anyway, buying VeriSign, buying Skype…. at least they’re giving something back to the community even if they’ll surely reap the rewards for it now!

WebServices are the way forward, there’s surely no doubting that. Having been involved in developing simple web services over the last 12 months you get to see first hand the benefit of having them in place. Amazon do it, Flickr do it, eBay had been doing it – but at least now they’re doing it for free!

Interesting times ahead….