The API economy of the 21st century

15

September

2022

5/5 (1)

You have probably heard of APIs. If you have a more technical background, you probably understand APIs quite well. But have you thought about how APIs will affect the economy and businesses in the future? This text will not be very technical. I will mostly talk about the side of APIs that might interest business students more: how APIs have changed businesses and industries, how consumers benefit from them, and what are some business-related challenges in the new API economy. But first, let’s get a one-paragraph introduction to APIs so that we are all on the same page.

APIs, or Application Programming Interfaces, are tools that allow software components to exchange information with one another (“What Is an API? – API Beginner’s Guide – AWS,” n.d.). There are many different protocols and architectures that APIs use, but I will not dive deep into this. If you want to dive a little deeper into the technical stuff I would recommend the above reference from Amazon. For the scope of this blog, I think it’s just important to understand that APIs facilitate communication and data exchange between two different softwares. 

To make you understand how important these APIs are in the 21st-century economy, I will provide a few examples of where APIs are used. If you have ever visited a website that requires you to create a user, you have probably seen the possibility of logging in with a Google or Facebook account. This is possible because of APIs that allow the website to communicate with Google or Facebook. When you order something from a website and pay for it by clicking on the PayPal logo, or iDEAL in the Netherlands, you are seeing an API in use. So as you see, we rely on APIs every day, probably without thinking about it at all. In these examples, we see some of the benefits of the API economy for both companies and users. For companies, this means that products can be developed faster and easier. For example, log-in integrations from Google and Facebook mean that you do not need to code a log-in service for your website yourself, but instead it is provided to you by another company. Third-party log-in also helps consumers as you do not need to create a new account and password for every website. In general, APIs enable a more seamless customer experience for end users.

However, APIs do not come without their challenges. There are many areas of concern in the API economy and obstacles that firms need to overcome to take advantage of the opportunities that APIs provide. In older companies, the culture of closed-off, proprietary product development is often in contradiction with the openness of APIs that aims to create an ecosystem where third-party providers offer an integrated solution (Sisk, 2015). Also, APIs have some security concerns and poorly designed APIs have resulted in considerable data breaches (Munsch & Munsch, 2020). In addition, APIs make a company more dependent on other companies. In the log-in example above, a website using Google’s log-in is dependent on Google so that users can access their accounts. 

Despite these concerns and obstacles, APIs are here to stay. For example, Google and Twitter alone process billions of API requests a day (Savitz, 2012). The breakthrough of the API economy also goes beyond big tech companies as considerable adoption is already seen in industries, such as finance and real estate (Sisk, 2015) Thus, it is important for managers to think about strategies to make the most of this technology and for students to understand the API economy in which they will most likely be working in the future.

References

Munsch, A., & Munsch, P. (2020). The future of api (application programming interface) security: the adoption of apis for digital communications and the implications for cyber security vulnerabilities.(article 2). Journal of International Technology and Information Management, 29(3).

Savitz, E. (2012, August 29). Welcome To The API Economy. Retrieved September 15, 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2012/08/29/welcome-to-the-api-economy/?sh=50bbb9e53a21

Sisk, D. (2015, January 30). API economy. Retrieved September 15, 2022, from https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/focus/tech-trends/2015/tech-trends-2015-what-is-api-economy.html

What is an API? – API Beginner’s Guide – AWS. (n.d.). Retrieved September 15, 2022, from https://aws.amazon.com/what-is/api/

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Was Huawei allowing an unknown app to invade into our phones?

7

October

2019

5/5 (2) As many of you probably know already, the Trump administration banned US companies from doing business with Huawei a few months ago. As a consequence, the Mate 30 Pro, Huawei’s latest flagship phone was launched without Google apps due to the import ban. The phone came with a basic, open-source Android instead of the advanced Google Mobile Service (e.g. Google Play Store, Gmail and Google Maps) we are accustomed to.

However, a few months ago an anonymous Chinese company called Lzplay came with a workaround. Through their website, you can easily download their app to gain access to Google services. Google apps should not be able to work on Mate 30 due to the lack of system-level permissions. However, Lzplay’s method managed to do so. Nonetheless, not without a price. According to John Wu, an Android security researcher, Lzplay used undocumented Huawei APIs inside the operating system that is used for device security to trick Google servers. What does this mean for your phone? After the installation of Lzplay, your Mate 30 Pro’s security is at risk since the application has administrator rights. That means that Lzplay can easily brick your phone or install ransomware without you noticing.

According to Huawei’s documentation for security authorization SDK, third party developers are required to sign legal agreements and let Huawei review it in order to gain access to the software development kit (SDK). Therefore, the developer of Lzplay was somehow aware of these undocumented APIs, signed the legal agreements, went through the reviews and eventually have the app signed by Huawei. It should also be noted that Lzplay was launched 3 days before the public launch of the Mate 30 Pro which means that Lzplay knew well about all of this before the launch and had the time to build an app, went through the review process, and launch a website. Wu suggested that Huawei is aware of the secret tools Lzplay used and explicitly allowed its existence since this will allow people to get Google Play onto the devices that would have been blocked otherwise.

Last week, Wu revealed the information regarding Lzplay and shortly after, the website of Lzplay was taken offline and the signature was remotely revoked by Huawei. Does this mean that Huawei played a part in this? It’s hard to say. According to a Huawei spokesperson, the multinational technology company has no involvement with Lzplay. It could be that Huawei created Lzplay to alleviate Google app anxiety for potential Mate 30’s customers. If this was the case, then it sure did backfire Huawei. Albeit, the backdoor may be shut for now but could be opened again through another method. Probably, a more solid one than the one Lzplay offered.

References:

Amadeo, R. (2019). ‘The Internet’s horrifying new method for installing Google apps on Huawei phones’. Accessed on 7 October 2019 on https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/10/the-internets-horrifying-new-method-for-installing-google-apps-on-huawei-phones/2/

Cooper, D. (2019). ‘Huawei’s Mate 30 loses workaround for installing Google apps’. Accessed on 7 October 2019 on https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/02/huawei-mate-30-workaround-lzplay-shut-down/?guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAF-jsfJEpD19GyD_nXAQn-U0-gpP1qukCY-g7MT-c7nx7eTOV_o2k3bTYi6CoLTeBDOS1_K3xhhys9OsnNdzjmrZrp7qcUacIYBP-q26AJX2LK8XiuegqjcUF0iudVPLpmCsC2Al37FZae8eKAlFkXE0UJEBUWYTcHe4npVX0gmw&guccounter=2

Huawei (n.d.) ‘安全类授权开放开发指南’. Accessed on 7 October 2019 on https://developer.huawei.com/consumer/cn/devservice/doc/30702

Phelan, D. (2019). ‘Huawei Shock: Mate 30 Pro’s Back Door To Google Apps Slams Shut’. Accessed on 7 October 2019 on https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidphelan/2019/10/01/huawei-mate-30-pro-has-the-back-door-to-loading-google-apps-just-slammed-shut/#c69d7dc76a82

Wu, J. (2019). ‘Huawei’s Undocumented APIs – A Backdoor to Reinstall Google Services’. Accessed on 7 October 2019 on https://medium.com/@topjohnwu/huaweis-undocumented-apis-a-backdoor-to-reinstall-google-services-c3a5dd71a7cd

 

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