Google Says Data is More Like Sunlight Than Oil (businessinsider.com)

Google wants to popularize a more upbeat way of describing data: It's more like sunlight than oil. From a report: Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday morning, Google's chief financial officer, Ruth Porat, said that "data is more like sunlight than oil," adding, "It is like sunshine -- we keep using it, and it keeps regenerating." It's a twist on the well-known phrase "data is the new oil," meaning the world's most valuable resource is information rather than petroleum. Like the oil barons who preceded them, Silicon Valley titans such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon have risen quickly to profit from this new resource and even control its flow. And in another echo of history, regulators are eyeing the industry.

Comments

Says a lot about the amount of data Google gets

[Monster_user]

This is just Google bragging about the insane quantities of data the get through their various platforms and services. Data is oil indicates that there is significant value in data. Data is sunshine means that you get so much data thrown at you, that you begin to notice clouds, rain clouds, and other weather patterns in the data. Sunshine also invokes shadows. At night a shadow is impenetrable, buried in the darkness of the unknown, you have to shine the light directly on the object your interested in. In the daylight a shadow conceals almost nothing. Like Facebook "shadow profiles" of people without accounts.

Data is sunshine also implies that there is a recurring pattern to the data, like an ebb and flow of the tide, or seasonal changes, or the rotation of the earth. The data refreshes, it doesn't change significantly.

This implies that data is still oil, and validates the usefulness of data. Sunshine is validation of the data. Oil is the data.

Neither

[chispito]

Oil? Sunlight? Those are both stupid analogies. Data are simply information. You do not need an analogy to explain that.

Where's my SPF1000 sunscreen at?

[Rick Schumann]

You're not welcome to my data, now or ever, I do not consent to your collecting it, and I sure as fuck don't consent to your selling it if you had it.