25 years ago, in November 2000, eBay released the first modern REST API for its partners.
The rest (pun intended) is history!
🔹 2000: Salesforce and Amazon follow closely, resulting in what was called, at the time, the Programmable Web.
🔹 2008: Apple opens the nascent iPhone ecosystem to 3d party developers, and since apps need data, API usage explodes.
🔹 2010: Stripe launches the first “API as a Product,” prioritizing developers and setting the standard for an exceptional developer experience.
🔹 2012: Atlassian establishes its Marketplace, bringing APIs squarely into the enterprise, vastly increasing its reach and revenue.
🔹 2015: Amazon launches the AWS API Gateway, enabling anyone to integrate APIs into their cloud applications easily.
🔹 2023: The past decade has seen the rise of API Design, Governance, and API Management. OpenAI brings it all together, catapulting the usage of its revolutionary models and enabling a multitude of AI startups.
🔹 2025: Fast forward to today, APIs are more relevant than ever, with Model Context Protocol (MCP) becoming the universal way for AI agents to access up-to-date data and perform actions.
What other turning points in the history of APIs would you add to this list?
P.S. - In API Fundamentals for Product Managers on Maven, we will learn from examples of successful API businesses, so you can use them to build better API products.
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