Ryan Lawler

Netflix is getting a lot stingier with the way that third-party developers can use its content, announcing that it will stop supporting its public application program interface (API) by the end of 2014.

In a letter to API partners, Netflix VP of Edge Engineering Daniel Jacobson announced that it would retire the public API program effective November 14.

The decision to shut down its API seems a long time coming. Launched in 2008, the API originally provided third-party developers a way to access and point to content that users could get from Netflix in its streaming and DVD catalogs. That helped the company grow, as subscribers could use third-party apps to check the availability of titles, reserve DVDs, and even link directly to streaming content on the web. At the same time, it gave developers a way to build new experiences around Netflix content that they weren’t licensing themselves.

But with more than 35 million subscribers in the US and another 12.5 million internationally, the company apparently no longer needs third-party support to help it grow. Instead, it’s decided to limit API access to the apps that it builds and those from select partners.