data services: from ownership to facilitation

At the moment, proprietary data-sources own the space, [...] They're starting to license their data, selectively, and I think, over the next few years, we'll see them turning to increasingly fluid and commoditized services...

But, [...] perhaps the future -- perhaps the game-changer -- is to be the business or organization that throws all this model away; who says that the future is not in owning data, but in creating an ecosystem filled with data that's bubbled up from the people, in which you can offer new services that come from being the main facilitator of this new kind of web, and a new kind of relationship; a more collaborative relationship between company and consumer.

-- Tom Coates, Greater than the sum of its parts, speech at The Future of Web Apps Summit 2006 : audio, slides