2006 is really going to bear some very cool innovations in the web API arena. Alexa (makers of the internet archive and the way back machine), have opened their web crawler to the public and for a small fee, anybody can access their index. I can only imagine some of the great innovations that people are going to develop with this. I see semantic search engines, mashups, mobile services and many other great possibilities. One thing that has bugged me about web APIs like Google Maps is that they provide extremely limited access. Alexa has changed the game. I can’t wait to see how the competition responds.