4 ms·

Maybe you can crowdsource pricing info. That way, you're not scraping, and users are voluntarily sharing what they've searched.

terravion 9y ago
Or maybe they could provably crowdsource some of the information and say that the fraction that is bot / crowdsourced is proprietary and irrelevant. Then send a copy of the HiQLabs v. LinkedIn case. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-11-15/the-brutal-fight-to-mine-your-data-and-sell-it-to-your-boss https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-11-15/the-bruta...
justgottasay3 9y ago
That would be one way to comply with the letter of the TOS. There will be some issue of getting enough traction from users that obey the TOS to make the site useful, though. I think crowdsourcing would open up SWmonkey to 'attack' from SW, where SW would flood the channel with conflicting info at a rate that would make the SWmonkey site useless to legitimate customers. Also, most of the companies that offer fare comparisons do not show SW flights... Some of those companies have the tech chops to implement 'fixes' that would comply with the SW site TOS and the massive legal departments to defend their position/approach in any and all courts in the world.
jerf 9y ago
That's got a "boil the ocean" problem. It's probably easier to imagine it on a per-flight basis; how many people in a set of people who may look at a given flight are going to be swmonkey users? You have to get that number above a certain threshold before that would work, but it's hard to get that number above a certain threshold because nobody will want to use the service until you're there. Plus, with the way airline pricing works now, just because Alice sees one price doesn't mean Bob will see it ten minutes later. The faster the prices change, the higher the percentage of people you need to have crowdsourcing. And I've just assumed that "crowdsourcing" looks like "install a browser extension". If it involves "typing numbers into another site" you can expect a participation rate indistinguishable from 0%. I've also assumed Southwest remains oblivious to this and never takes any actions to counter what they consider an undesirable use, which is also unrealistic.

terravion 9y ago

Or maybe they could provably crowdsource some of the information and say that the fraction that is bot / crowdsourced is proprietary and irrelevant. Then send a copy of the HiQLabs v. LinkedIn case. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-11-15/the-brutal-fight-to-mine-your-data-and-sell-it-to-your-boss https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-11-15/the-bruta...

justgottasay3 9y ago

That would be one way to comply with the letter of the TOS. There will be some issue of getting enough traction from users that obey the TOS to make the site useful, though. I think crowdsourcing would open up SWmonkey to 'attack' from SW, where SW would flood the channel with conflicting info at a rate that would make the SWmonkey site useless to legitimate customers. Also, most of the companies that offer fare comparisons do not show SW flights... Some of those companies have the tech chops to implement 'fixes' that would comply with the SW site TOS and the massive legal departments to defend their position/approach in any and all courts in the world.

jerf 9y ago

That's got a "boil the ocean" problem. It's probably easier to imagine it on a per-flight basis; how many people in a set of people who may look at a given flight are going to be swmonkey users? You have to get that number above a certain threshold before that would work, but it's hard to get that number above a certain threshold because nobody will want to use the service until you're there. Plus, with the way airline pricing works now, just because Alice sees one price doesn't mean Bob will see it ten minutes later. The faster the prices change, the higher the percentage of people you need to have crowdsourcing. And I've just assumed that "crowdsourcing" looks like "install a browser extension". If it involves "typing numbers into another site" you can expect a participation rate indistinguishable from 0%. I've also assumed Southwest remains oblivious to this and never takes any actions to counter what they consider an undesirable use, which is also unrealistic.