[whatever1]

Information was always the moat for everything. We literally have spies who risk their lives to try to gain access to information.

[tehjoker]

This is heavily context dependent... There are plenty of situations where everyone knows the relevant factors, it's who has possession of land, resources, people, etc.

[eloisant]

Yes, during the 2000's there was the "mashup" fads. People creating companies around mashing data from one service to another. Like putting Craigslist listings on a Google Map.

And guess what, all those mashup companies didn't last a couple of years. Because they didn't have a direct access to data.

[gopher_space]

Ideas that didn't scale past a comfortable income for the three people originally involved.

[calvinmorrison]

yet sites like, gasbuddy and builtwith.com do seem to have a strong presence and a valuable one.