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Here is an example of one of the risks of tethered applications Zittrain discusses in The Future of the Internet. As posted on the ProgrammableWeb, Google just announced that it will shut down three APIs. The services affected are Jaiku, Dodgeball, and Mashup Editor. The code for Jaiku will be released as open source once the service is discontinued, Dodgeball will terminate without replacement, and Google will promote its AppEngine as replacement for Mashup Editor. While, of course, shutting down APIs is part and parcel of Perpetual Beta, this is a stark reminder that as we are building applications on top of the services of others, the very existence of those applications depends on the continued availability of those services.