Import.io: “We Turn Any Website Into A Database”

Andrew Fogg, co-founder of the UK start-up Import.io, thinks every web resource should have an Application Programming Interface (API). In order to make online data more accessible, his company turns any website into a spreadsheet or an API, for free.

Fogg claims that in the past few months, the users of this service have created more Web APIs than the rest of the Internet combined.

Jerome Bouteiller has interviewed the entrepreneur at LeWeb 2013 conference in Paris, where the two discussed the future of the company and the idea of the Semantic Web, proposed by the ‘father of the Internet’ Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

“Structuring the Web”

Since being launched in 2012, Import.io platform has attracted more than 10,000 beta users, who have built around 15,000 APIs.

Fogg, who previously worked for Microsoft Research, Barclays Capital, Cambridge University and the Wellcome Trust, says connecting more websites with APIs will allow search engines to answer queries that were previously impossible to process.

Companies like Import.io are especially relevant today, as the Internet of Things is set to connect billions of devices in the next two years.

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