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April 13, 2007

Controlling data

Controlling data: Tim O'Reilly had a strong point in WIRED earlier today: "That goes back to a major theme of web 2.0 that people haven't yet tweaked to. It's really about data and who owns and controls, or gives the best access to, a class of data. Amazon is now the definitive source for data about whole sets of products -- fungible consumer products. EBay is the authoritative source for the secondary market of those products. Google is the authority for information about facts, but they're relatively undifferentiated." Google is also one of the biggest data-holders for information about where people go on the web, and their acquisition of DoubleClick gives this a massive boost. Today there's still a lot of talk about examining computer code, being able to edit it ourselves... the inclusion of source files with all services is the main driver behind opensource talk today. But I suspect the bigger "proprietary vs open" discussion will take place about data, and how well you can see what others know about you, and how well you can control it. With much of the web today, you and I are becoming the product, the thing which is sold to advertisers. Serving ads or other content to so many of the world's web pages, and remembering their visitors, is increasingly a power point these days... this DoubleClick acquisition seems a very significant deal.

Posted by JohnDowdell at April 13, 2007 05:27 PM

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Posted by: polyGeek at April 14, 2007 08:28 AM