3 ms·

D&B isn't some "random" company. If you've ever been faced with a project that requires you to have a reasonably complete set of information on most businesses

D&B isn't some "random" company. If you've ever been faced with a project that requires you to have a reasonably complete set of information on most businesses in the country, you quickly learn about D&B. Almost every large company is licensing D&B data in some form or another. Cataloging every business in the US isn't an easy problem to get right, even for a company as large as Apple.

jbob2000 9y ago
They are just a "random" company. They don't sell any product a regular person would know about. Why was I able to setup a Google Play account without D&B? Amazon let me use EC2 without D&B, SendGrid let me use their mail API without any of this. It's a company that appears out of nowhere, for no reason. That's why it's "random". It's a stupid service that does nothing. If they deny me and I have nefarious, ulterior motives, I'll just register another company. And for what it's worth, my company is Canadian and I'm pretty sure they don't have any ability to verify Canadian companies. The phone call didn't ask me anything about a GST number, business number, or any of that, they just asked if the phone number and address of the company were correct. How do they know if I'm giving them correct information? I could say my company is on the other side of the country, how would they know? The whole process took me a week to get through. I can purchase a goddamn assault rifle and shoot up a school in less time than that, but heavens forbid I put an app on an app store! Good lord won't you think of the children!
- curun1r 9y ago
  I think you've missed my point. The D&B requirement is a natural consequence of the fact that Apple has decided to require that publishers be an established business. My point wasn't to defend Apple's decision in that matter. You can setup Google Play, use EC2 or send a SendGrid email because those companies haven't made the same decision that Apple has. I was mainly pointing out that D&B is a huge player that a lot of us have heard of. It makes complete sense that, once Apple has made the decision to require an established business, that they'd delegate the validation process to D&B. Just because people who have never thought about solving a problem like Apple decided to solve haven't heard of D&B, doesn't make them some "random" company. They're the market leader in their space and, as someone used their licensed data in a product, it makes complete sense to me that Apple would use their service in support of their business decision.
notyourday 9y ago
It is a random garbage company that is stuck in early nineties. It preys on stupid first time company owners whom it sells its credit builder for business services. That's the entire business model. Edit: Can't respond due to rate limit - 40k/year from 1000 companies is nothing compared to $199/mo and more from credit builder from every Jack and Jill with a DBA, LLC or Inc.
- curun1r 9y ago
  > That's the entire business model. Umm...that's comically wrong. The fortune-500 company I worked for paid more than $40k/yr to license their data and update it monthly. Given the description of how Apple is using it, they're probably paying six figures per year. Neither of our companies were buying credit builder services.
  - jessaustin 9y ago
    Old-n-busted companies pay through the nose for old-n-busted services. Film at 11.
logfromblammo 9y ago
I worked at a trademark search and brand-protection company for a few years, and we never used D&B. We scraped from every secretary of state in the US and the federal patent and trademark office, and got some info from LexisNexis. We had a mess of regular expressions that had to be updated any time a secretary of state changed their website. But in the end, we had a reasonably complete set of information on all registered corporations and DBA registrations in the country, which was updated at least monthly. We certainly had a record for every company that had a registered trademark. Apple could certainly do that work itself, at a fraction of the cost of whatever it pays D&B. Any Joe Schmoe in the country can look at a business name, go to the secretary of state of the state they claim to be registered in, and verify the detail, which always includes the name and address of the registered agent, and most of the time also includes the principals of the corporation. D&B is almost completely pointless in 2018.

jbob2000 9y ago

They are just a "random" company. They don't sell any product a regular person would know about. Why was I able to setup a Google Play account without D&B? Amazon let me use EC2 without D&B, SendGrid let me use their mail API without any of this. It's a company that appears out of nowhere, for no reason. That's why it's "random". It's a stupid service that does nothing. If they deny me and I have nefarious, ulterior motives, I'll just register another company. And for what it's worth, my company is Canadian and I'm pretty sure they don't have any ability to verify Canadian companies. The phone call didn't ask me anything about a GST number, business number, or any of that, they just asked if the phone number and address of the company were correct. How do they know if I'm giving them correct information? I could say my company is on the other side of the country, how would they know? The whole process took me a week to get through. I can purchase a goddamn assault rifle and shoot up a school in less time than that, but heavens forbid I put an app on an app store! Good lord won't you think of the children!

curun1r 9y ago
I think you've missed my point. The D&B requirement is a natural consequence of the fact that Apple has decided to require that publishers be an established business. My point wasn't to defend Apple's decision in that matter. You can setup Google Play, use EC2 or send a SendGrid email because those companies haven't made the same decision that Apple has. I was mainly pointing out that D&B is a huge player that a lot of us have heard of. It makes complete sense that, once Apple has made the decision to require an established business, that they'd delegate the validation process to D&B. Just because people who have never thought about solving a problem like Apple decided to solve haven't heard of D&B, doesn't make them some "random" company. They're the market leader in their space and, as someone used their licensed data in a product, it makes complete sense to me that Apple would use their service in support of their business decision.

notyourday 9y ago

It is a random garbage company that is stuck in early nineties. It preys on stupid first time company owners whom it sells its credit builder for business services. That's the entire business model. Edit: Can't respond due to rate limit - 40k/year from 1000 companies is nothing compared to $199/mo and more from credit builder from every Jack and Jill with a DBA, LLC or Inc.

curun1r 9y ago
> That's the entire business model. Umm...that's comically wrong. The fortune-500 company I worked for paid more than $40k/yr to license their data and update it monthly. Given the description of how Apple is using it, they're probably paying six figures per year. Neither of our companies were buying credit builder services.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  Old-n-busted companies pay through the nose for old-n-busted services. Film at 11.

logfromblammo 9y ago

I worked at a trademark search and brand-protection company for a few years, and we never used D&B. We scraped from every secretary of state in the US and the federal patent and trademark office, and got some info from LexisNexis. We had a mess of regular expressions that had to be updated any time a secretary of state changed their website. But in the end, we had a reasonably complete set of information on all registered corporations and DBA registrations in the country, which was updated at least monthly. We certainly had a record for every company that had a registered trademark. Apple could certainly do that work itself, at a fraction of the cost of whatever it pays D&B. Any Joe Schmoe in the country can look at a business name, go to the secretary of state of the state they claim to be registered in, and verify the detail, which always includes the name and address of the registered agent, and most of the time also includes the principals of the corporation. D&B is almost completely pointless in 2018.