This is great, but the idea of data "ownership" sticks out in his talk like a sore thumb.
No one owns data. I know that a lot of young hotshot developers are looking to take over the markets that control data today and make some profits for themselves. But ultimately the very idea of data ownership is antithetical to the digital revolution, and the sooner the new generation of technological entrepreneurs understand this, the faster the transition will take place.
Alexander Howard originally shared this post:
+Gil Elbaz "wants to gather the data universe," reports the +The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/business/factuals-gil-elbaz-wants-to-gather-the-data-universe.html?pagewanted=all
I'm still catching up on various articles from this past weekend. This one, on Xoogler and data entrepreneur +Gil Elbaz's work at +Factual, keeps popping up on multiple feeds. It's a terrific read. Here's a key excerpt on what they're up to:
"Since its start in 2008, Factual has absorbed what Mr. Elbaz terms “many billions of individual facts we’ve collated.”
Geared to both big companies and smaller software developers, it includes available government data, terabytes of corporate data and information on 60 million places in 50 countries, each described by 17 to 40 attributes. Factual knows more than 800,000 restaurants in 30 different ways, including location, ownership and ratings by diners and health boards. It also contains information on half a billion Web pages, a list of America’s high schools and data on the offices, specialties and insurance preferences of 1.8 million United States health care professionals. There are also listings of 14,000 wine grape varietals, of military aircraft accidents from 1950 to 1974, and of body masses of major celebrities. Odd facts matter too, Mr. Elbaz notes.
…
Factual’s plan, outlined in a big orange room with a few tables and walled with whiteboards, is to build the world’s chief reference point for thousands of interconnected supercomputing clouds. The digital world is expected to hold a collective 2.7 zettabytes of data by year-end, an amount roughly equivalent to 700 billion DVDs. Factual, which now has 50 employees, could prove immensely valuable as this world grows and these databases begin to interact."
I interviewed Elbaz at last year's Web 2.0 Summit. It's safe to say he's one of the smartest people I met there. I hope you enjoy our conversation!