Search and recommendation services are definitely an example of things that do actually benefit greatly from more data. If you're building something like that t

Search and recommendation services are definitely an example of things that do actually benefit greatly from more data. If you're building something like that then you will almost definitely benefit form more data. However, it might still be possible to generate music recommendations for a user based only on their usage patterns in their local music player. I'm not an expert in that area but I imagine it could be done. > Good luck getting users to adopt your software, though, regardless of how privacy-conscious they say they are. It would probably be difficult mostly because we have trained users that an app isn't useful unless you can sync it to all your devices. We are always going on about how much better things are once you can connect them to everything else on the planet. We've sold users on the idea that they need to be connected all them time and we need to know everything that they do so we can "improve their experience" which for most things means "show you ads." I'm not knocking webapps in general. I make them all the time. Some of my favorite things are webapps. I'm writing this comment on a webapp. I just also believe that not everything needs to be a webapp and have a constant connection to some server telling it about everything I'm doing.