Generational Data Conflicts Loom
August 3, 2009
Governments are making data available. A good example is Data.gov. Not perfect, but interesting. On the other side are the commercial database publishers. Examples include the dinosaur-like Thomson Reuters, LexisNexis, and Cambridge Scientific. Each of these commercial enterprises charge money for data. The fees are high because each of these companies tries to deliver Google-type services without Google’s advertising business model. This means that the person wanting the data has to pay a great deal even to learn if the commercial database has information of use to the customer. Libraries, once the cash cow for some commercial database publishers, have fallen on hard times.
Where’s the conflict?
In my opinion, the Digital Beat story “Open Data Is the Future of Web Discovery” makes the potential problem easy to grasp. The story contains this interesting passage:
For now, we need one of Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to make toolbar data available to see if there’d be massive advances by third-party developers. The first company to do this will open a new market, so who will be the first, and why? These big companies could find a way – like Facebook has – to build a vibrant developer community using their data and distribution. Perhaps the data provider can participate in the value created by charging for accessing and using the data. Or maybe Facebook, Twitter (or Twitter developers) will be the first to share click and other usage data. No longer would you have to build a multi billion dollar company to get access to data that could be used to make significant advances for users. All these companies would need to feel comfortable that users’ privacy is protected. Googlers tell me it’s highly unlikely Google would release toolbar data because the data is too valuable, privacy concerns and users might be surprised to see how much Google knows about them. Maybe the data is too important to Google so the company must hold it close to maintain its competitive advantage, but perhaps Yahoo and Microsoft would be willing to share data with select partners while tightly protecting user privacy for a chance to increase their competitiveness with Google. Or maybe these companies will try to build discovery services themselves. In the meantime, those potential advances in search, discovery and more are being stifled. Developers using Twitter, Yahoo and Microsoft search APIs could make better services for users with more data from those companies as well as Google, Facebook, Mozilla and others like data analytics companies. The chance these companies will share more data with developers aside, it’s worth figuring what would be possible if they did.
The warring factions will be:
- Governments who make data available for all and permit commercial entities to repurpose government crated information into commercial products
- Social and real time system that offer free data and make it possible for commercial entities to create new products and services so that monetization models emerge
- Commercial database companies who want to preserve their proprietary content and create new, high value products using traditional business models
- Individuals who write Web log posts that become fodder for aggregation and often play the role of “information farmers” raising wheat that food companies process into high value products.
My thought is that these forces may split along generational lines and engage in quite interesting interactions.
Stephen Arnold, August 2, 2009
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