A paper in Harvard Business Review takes the position that ‘Data Monopolists Like Google Are Threatening the Economy‘. According to this paper, beyond the usage of massive data to create value through data mining, the fact that these troves of data are concentrated within a limited number of major actors is a major issue akin to the concentration of means of production in the early XXth century in the hand of a few monopolists.
I don’t agree with this analysis. First, there are always new actors coming into play that take significant shares of the available data. For example one could argue that Facebook today concentrates a lot of personal data, and it is only a fairly recent entrant compared to Google and Yahoo.
Second, there is no major capital investment barrier like for infrastructure or industrial facilities that were at the origin of the anti-monopolistic laws. There is no limited resources like for oil, or extremely expensive investments required like for heavy industries. Data and its management is not entirely free, but reasonably cheap so that new entrants can still appear. In addition the amount of data generated worldwide increases exponentially, creating ever more opportunities.
Yes, significant value can be created by clever organizations out of Big Data. No, these are not monopolies that impede the operations of the market, as long as internet usage is maintained equal for all users.
Please comment if you don’t agree!
