The Economist: Data, the Oil of the Digital Era

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The Economist: Data, the Oil of the Digital Era

By CircleID Reporter
May 05, 2017, 9:16 pm PDT Views: 12,003 Add Comment

In its latest print edition, The Economist calls the world’s most valuable resource to be no longer oil, but data. The article argues that today’s titans—Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft—are the giants that deal in data, the oil of the digital era and they seem unstoppable. “Internet companies’ control of data gives them enormous power. Old ways of thinking about competition, devised in the era of oil, look outdated in what has come to be called the ‘data economy’ ... A new approach is needed. ... Rebooting antitrust for the information age will not be easy. It will entail new risks: more data sharing, for instance, could threaten privacy. But if governments don’t want a data economy dominated by a few giants, they will need to act soon.”

By CircleID Reporter

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