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>grabbing free info anyone can get Yes, that's true, the info is free in a sense that someone published it on the internet. But taking the weather companies as
by greyman 5y ago
>grabbing free info anyone can get
Yes, that's true, the info is free in a sense that someone published it on the internet. But taking the weather companies as an example, someone has to measure the weather, and then compute the predictions. That'a real cost someone needs to pay. And that I think is the reason some people don't like what Google is doing - they are displaying the temperature, while someone else paid for it to be measured.
- simonh 5y agoGoogle Search weather data is provided by weather.com in a commercial relationship with Google, so either Google is paying for the data like everyone else, or weather.com is providing it at their cost for their own reasons.
- jonathankoren 5y agoTBF though, weather is like the worst example of rent seeking. The people that provide the most value to weather reporting and prediction is the federal government through the a National Weather Service. Private companies usually just repackage the free government provided reports, or they do some analysis on top of the government provided data. That’s what has always made AccuWeather’s attempt to “privatize” (in reality stop having the government publicly publish forecasts, but continue the hard work of data collection) the weather service transparent rent seeking.
- travisporter 5y agoAgreed. weather.gov is maybe a bit ugly but works great, and is mobile optimized. Although I disagree with other point, spokeo and fastpeoplesearch is the absolute worst example of digging through private info of millions and "only consolidating it". SWEs working on this type of stuff are either immature or have no soul in my opinion