> In December 2019, Google and Facebook proudly announced a major milestone, which was echoed in news media all around the world: it is now possible to copy a picture from Facebook to Google Photos. This news came in mere months after we celebrated the 50th anniversary of another technological feat: the moon landing of 20 July 1969, when millions of households witnessed Neil Armstrong take a giant leap for mankind.
> So let me get this straight: two of the largest tech companies in history make headlines because in 2019, they move a single photo over the whopping distance of 11 km it takes from the Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park to the Googleplex in Mountain View, whereas in 1969, we sent live video signals from 380,000 km away on the actual moon?
> If those two companies, both widely hailed as pinnacles of technology, genuinely consider this to be innovation they are proud of, the only logical conclusion is that data-driven innovation today is fundamentally broken.
> The problem is widespread and not limited to technology or social media. Any sector that requires personal data to deliver services, from retail over insurance to health, suffers from the damaging effects of siloization. Companies increasingly need more access to data, but they won’t get there if they keep on collecting that data themselves.[...]
0. https://ruben.verborgh.org/blog/2020/12/07/a-data-ecosystem-...