Dun and Bradstreet teams up with Microsoft to reimagine the power of data

Agreed. D&B is a complete racket.

D&B made a terrible mistake in 2010. They let a startup in Malibu use the D&B name and take over some D&B services for small businesses. The startup called itself "Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp". Their business model involved cold-calling companies and giving the impression that unless they paid D&BCC, their credit rating would get worse. This caused terrible publicity for D&B, lawsuits, extortion charges[1] and eventually settlements. D&B finally bought D&BCC for $360 million in 2015.[2]

This destroyed the reputation of a once-respected company.

[1] https://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2014/01/21/dun-... [1] http://labusinessjournal.com/news/2015/apr/29/dun-bradstreet...

Companies have no incentive to share information about themselves to anyone other than the government and credit agencies. So given that constraint what D&B does is the most efficient way. And they're already so dominant it's hard for competitors to break into their business. So they have monopoly power and can afford to have bad software.

Seems like their business model only works because of the fragmented, state by state nature of getting 3rd party business info in the US.

I imagine they aren't used much in places like the UK, where the government offers centralized business info lookup.

I've worked at a company that used D&B data and services a fair bit and while I agree that the process is painful I'm not aware of anyone else that can offer a comparable service - particularly not internationally.

Historically D&B was the business credit company that actually sent people to look at a business. They'd report back "2 story brick building on busy street in good condition with good customer traffic". Somebody has to collect data on the ground.

Their reporting and "past performance" info gets used by USG if you are interested in federal contracting.