APIStore——Technology innovation thinking from Baidu

Mobile Internet, along with the concept of "Internet +", has made the entire related industry booming. People with sharp eyes and quick hands are keeping up with the trend and integrating various resources in their hands to try to make money. The distance between these bosses and the resources they have sorted out and the market where they can make money is only a programmer's distance. However, this distance can be said to be sometimes very far and sometimes very close, full of too many unstable factors.

The ideal programmer is to work hard to build wheels and ships for the enterprise, allowing the enterprise to sail freely in various blue and red oceans. Such excellent programmers are often worthy of the remuneration generally believed by the market. However, sometimes you will encounter a rookie who asks for an exorbitant price, fails to produce the desired functions, and also delays the transformation of the enterprise.

The problems of technical people need to be solved by technology. Recently, a product called APIStore, which was presented at the 2015 Baidu World Conference, has provided some clues to the solution of this problem.

Figure 1 APIStore

The purpose of building APIStore is to build an API third-party distribution platform that connects service providers and developers by displaying various API interfaces and SDKs, adding a link in the development process to shorten the overall cycle.

Figure 2 APIStore’s involvement in development and conception

The APIStore platform aggregates various APIs and SDKs, connects service providers and developers, and builds a data and technology circulation ecosystem - allowing companies with data to realize data monetization and find application scenarios; allowing people who develop applications to use ready-made data and technology, solving the problem of not being able to find the required data or reinventing the wheel. It has now been connected to service providers such as Turing Robot, Hefeng Weather Network, JD Wanxiang, and Tengu Cloud. At the same time, APIStore has also become an open source interface for Baidu's core technologies and data, opening up Baidu's exclusive technologies, such as IDL's text recognition, face recognition, clothing recognition, Baidu Nuomi, and Baidu Takeout.

In addition, during the communication with APIStore staff, they also mentioned a framework that can greatly improve the development efficiency of developers-API framework. It allows you to simply select the API with the mouse, and the platform will be able to package and distribute the corresponding code to the local host to automatically generate a development environment. Its concept can be said to have greatly solved the efficiency and technical problems from a technical perspective. Imagine that this is like cooking. In the past, we still needed to grow vegetables and cook them ourselves. Now a large part of the raw materials have been delivered to you, and you can complete it by just following the instructions. However, at this stage, this function has not yet reached a fully mature stage, and it will take some time to achieve the convenience described.

In general, APIStore inherits the unique Baidu gene. The first thing that comes into view is the simple search box and the technical support that can be thought of without much thought. However, I believe that what can connect the two huge groups is not only the cold technology displayed on the screen, but also the spiritual operation of those cute girls and cute guys. When facing the challenges of similar products, Baidu's name alone is not enough to easily resolve all problems.

Baidu, as one of the big names in the domestic technology field, whether it is to attract hundreds of thousands or millions of mobile Internet developer traffic, or to build a network in the process of connecting API suppliers and developers, the essence of a product like APIStore is not just to bring benefits - perhaps the benefits brought are insignificant to Baidu - it is more like a hand trying to squeeze out the programmers' bubbles and revolutionize the entire market. We certainly hope that more developers can access this kind of function. As for the future of APIStore in this new small-scale battlefield, let us wait and see.