It's a tough position other companies are placing on SO. On one hand you can't alienate a portion of your community by closing all API/programming questions which are of a more proprietary nature just because they're of a proprietary nature. On the other hand, the general trend these companies are starting, to not build out a real support channel, is indicative of developers who don't really understand sales channels which should not be SO's problem. I wish more start ups would get better guidance about support if their products are aimed at developers. Really, they're missing another channel of communication and new business discovery.

I'm in favour of this for developer-focussed issues. One of the libraries I maintain (http://simplepie.org/) directs support to Stack Overflow, since the majority of questions are basic programming questions (along the lines of "how do I use substr"). I'm usually there to answer SimplePie-specific questions, but those are pretty relevant anyway.

Are there any YouTubers/Googlers here who could offer their insight given YouTube API [1] moved there just under a year ago?

[1] http://apiblog.youtube.com/2012/09/the-youtube-api-on-stack-...

I've seen this in a couple of places of late. Have been waiting for a "don't do this" post from the SO team.