MCP: Bringing mashups back!
July 24, 2025
In the summer of 2006, I discovered the blossoming world of web APIs: HTTP APIs like the Flickr API, JavaScript APIs like Google Maps API, and platform APIs like the iGoogle gadgets API. I spent my spare time making “mashups”: programs that connected together multiple APIs to create new functionality. For example:
- A search engine that found song lyrics from Google and their videos from YouTube
- A news site that combined RSS feeds from multiple sources
- A map plotting Flickr photos alongside travel recommendations
I adored the combinatorial power of APIs, and felt like the world was my mashable oyster. Mashups were actually the reason that I got back into web development, after having left it for a few years.
And now, with the growing popularity of MCP servers, I am getting a sense of deja vu.
Source: MCP: Bringing mashups back!
The era of mashups was perhaps he last hurrah of the early web, when Web 2.0 services like Google Maps, willingly or unwittingly exposed their APIs, and enabled innovative use of multiple services, beginning perhaps with Adrian Holovaty’s Chicago Crime.
The Web 2.0 companies in time restricted these uses of their APIs, but Pamela Fox wonders whether with MCP servers we might see a comeback of that culture.
