---
published: true
layout: post
title: There Are Business Reasons APIs Were The Menu
date: 2025-04-14T09:00:00.000Z
tags:
  - Business
  - Monetization
  - Menu
  - Artificial Intelligence
  - Politics
image: https://kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com/algorotoscope-master/bf-skinner-dragon-shadow-sun.jpg
---
The lack of business details in all the MCP vs API and MCP vs A2A discussions reveal the true intent of this artificial intelligence moment. One of the tells for me is how API, database, and file system are part of the MCP targeting system. Similar to the GraphQL argument, but scaled to artificial intelligence levels, MCP wants to circumvent the last twenty years of intentionally standing up APIs in front of our databases and file systems. Everyone tells me, well this is to speed up internal usage of AI. Hmmm….OK, so OpenAI, Claude, Microsoft, Google, and the other powers that be jockeying for dominance in the AI space are internal? Their models are owned and controlled exclusively by your enterprise? OK.

If you believe that venture-backed startups and the tech giants are altruistic and just want to help you connect the dots with all of your data—-I just don’t know what to tell you. In a gold rush, do you really think it makes sense to adopt the brand new specifications and tooling provided by the people participating in the gold rush. There were serious business reasons why enterprise have spent the last twenty years defining their digital menu using APIs, and MCP are looking to circumvent those reasons. [Google literally used my restaurant menu analogy in the Oracle vs. Google copyright case that went all the way to the Supreme Court](https://apievangelist.com/2014/05/23/restaurant-menus-as-analogy-for-api-copyright/). Except in this time period you were the restaurant, and you controlled the menuu--with MCP, they control the menu, and your enterprise is on the menu.

I know that people are saying that we are doing this so that the AI can provide you all the answers you need. I know that MCP makes a lot of sense when looked at purely through a technical lens. However once you start zooming out and looking at the business reasons we do API and the business imperative for MCP, as well as the political motivations for all the urgency, the demands of this new application layer, and the big money being spent on artificial intelligence--identifying who has control over the menu of enterprise digital resources and capabilities gets pretty concerning. The money being spent on AI just isn’t sustainable all by itself, but once you also begin to throw away what we’ve gained from the business of APIs over the last 20 years, things won’t even remotely pencil out.