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I'm more and more concerned that the legal and cultural environment for web scraping would make it hard for a company like Google or Yahoo to be founded today.

I'm more and more concerned that the legal and cultural environment for web scraping would make it hard for a company like Google or Yahoo to be founded today. The internet isn't about "don't take my stuff", it's about spreading that stuff around. I'm confused by people who want to make their data public, but want to control exactly how people access it.

ksk 12y ago
>make it hard for a company like Google or Yahoo to be founded today. Is that a bad thing? >The internet isn't about "don't take my stuff", it's about spreading that stuff around. Try asking Google if they want to "share" their database of crawled data. >I'm confused by people who want to make their data public, but want to control exactly how people access it. Me too.
- newaccountfool 12y ago
  >Is that a bad thing? Yes, no question about it. More players in the market means more competition and more competition means a better service.
  - ksk 12y ago
    >More players in the market means more competition and more competition means a better service I'm not sure if this is a joke. So, I'll refrain from replying.
    - parktheredcar 12y ago
      Could you explain your point of view? I'd like to understand both sides here and I think I understand why more competition would be good, but now why it wouldn't be.
      - ksk 12y ago
        >I think I understand why more competition would be good, but now why it wouldn't be. That is not what I said at all. I don't believe that more competition necessarily leads to better product/service. In fact I believe that in most cases it does not. In capitalist economies, companies try their hardest to avoid competing. Competition forces companies to reduce costs, and not necessarily increase quality. The quality of a product is not some number that people can read and go "oh yeah this product is better". Marketing people try hard to invent such pointless numbers (e.g. Megapixels in cameras.. horsepower in cars , etc etc). Also many CEOs don't have the first clue on how the product is actually made, much less increase its quality. They rely on these same 'marketing numbers' that their underlings serve them with. So, they too can go "oh yeah this number is increasing so our product is getting better". It seems like a lot of people are brainwashed into believing this free market utopia where things just automatically get better because everyone is competing and the customer is this genius who can figure out which company is delivering a better product. Its sort of like thinking "Well if I'm nice to everyone, everyone will be nice to me.". And then you realize that the real world is a dark place filled with assholes, where slavery is still rampant and many of the goods and services we consume are dependent on the exploitation of natural resources or other fellow humans. Sorry if reading all that bummed you out. I'm really a quite a cheerful person :P
TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
Agreed. I talked about this a while back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6572937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6572937 Someone decided to ban all bots from accessing their site except for Google and Bing. So much for "if you're so worried about Google just use another search engine".
hnal943 12y ago
I'm confused by people who want to make their data public, but want to control exactly how people access it. You mean like TV? or Radio? or print....
- johnward 12y ago
  To be fair those mediums all kind of suck in their own way.

ksk 12y ago

>make it hard for a company like Google or Yahoo to be founded today. Is that a bad thing? >The internet isn't about "don't take my stuff", it's about spreading that stuff around. Try asking Google if they want to "share" their database of crawled data. >I'm confused by people who want to make their data public, but want to control exactly how people access it. Me too.

newaccountfool 12y ago
>Is that a bad thing? Yes, no question about it. More players in the market means more competition and more competition means a better service.
- ksk 12y ago
  >More players in the market means more competition and more competition means a better service I'm not sure if this is a joke. So, I'll refrain from replying.
  - parktheredcar 12y ago
    Could you explain your point of view? I'd like to understand both sides here and I think I understand why more competition would be good, but now why it wouldn't be.
    - ksk 12y ago
      >I think I understand why more competition would be good, but now why it wouldn't be. That is not what I said at all. I don't believe that more competition necessarily leads to better product/service. In fact I believe that in most cases it does not. In capitalist economies, companies try their hardest to avoid competing. Competition forces companies to reduce costs, and not necessarily increase quality. The quality of a product is not some number that people can read and go "oh yeah this product is better". Marketing people try hard to invent such pointless numbers (e.g. Megapixels in cameras.. horsepower in cars , etc etc). Also many CEOs don't have the first clue on how the product is actually made, much less increase its quality. They rely on these same 'marketing numbers' that their underlings serve them with. So, they too can go "oh yeah this number is increasing so our product is getting better". It seems like a lot of people are brainwashed into believing this free market utopia where things just automatically get better because everyone is competing and the customer is this genius who can figure out which company is delivering a better product. Its sort of like thinking "Well if I'm nice to everyone, everyone will be nice to me.". And then you realize that the real world is a dark place filled with assholes, where slavery is still rampant and many of the goods and services we consume are dependent on the exploitation of natural resources or other fellow humans. Sorry if reading all that bummed you out. I'm really a quite a cheerful person :P

TheLoneWolfling 12y ago

Agreed. I talked about this a while back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6572937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6572937 Someone decided to ban all bots from accessing their site except for Google and Bing. So much for "if you're so worried about Google just use another search engine".

hnal943 12y ago

I'm confused by people who want to make their data public, but want to control exactly how people access it. You mean like TV? or Radio? or print....

johnward 12y ago
To be fair those mediums all kind of suck in their own way.