[bumby]

As a counter example, the government manages and collects all kinds of weather station data. But the trend is for private companies to get contracts to privatize the dissemination of that data through fee-based APIs etc. I would rather the government provide it instead of taxpayers having to pay twice to enrich some rent seeker.

[strictnein]

The government already does that.

   https://api.weather.gov/ 
   https://www.noaa.gov/nodd/datasets
   https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/cdo-web/

etc etc etc

[ordersofmag]

I think the point is that there has been a push to move away from this data continuing to be available from these sources.

[counters]

There has not.

[ordersofmag]

Attempts have been made starting back in 2005 https://www.congress.gov/bill/109th-congress/senate-bill/786...

[counters]

And I dare you to find another attempt in the intervening 20 years.

Santorum's bill was laughed out of Washington. It stands alone.

[slater]

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/07/noaa-pro...

[counters]

I'm not aware of any private company that has a contract with NOAA or the NWS to privately disseminate the agency's weather data (either acquired itself or purchased commercially).

[groundzeros2015]

Operating an API isn’t free either and the needs and scale change dramatically for customer. So you would rather the public pay for Google to use weather data on a massive scale?

[bumby]

I don’t follow. I would rather the government manage the API, like what NOAA does/did.

[groundzeros2015]

So then we are subsidizing Google’s outsized usage of that API?

[simonw]

Is this really an expensive problem to solve?

Give Google a continuous feed of the weather data which they cache locally. I can't imagine that being a particularly expensive thing to operate - no need to reply to an API call from Google every time someone searches for "weather".

[groundzeros2015]

That sounds like the arrangement you said we have. The government provides data to private companies who then mass distribute it in various forms because those costs and needs vary.

[crote]

The problem is that those very same private companies are trying really hard to ban the government from providing the same data for free to the general public, because it would be "unfair competition".

They get it for free from the government. They offer it as a paid service to the general public. Then they try to ban the government from giving it away for free to any potential competition.

[bumby]

As long as it’s properly addressed to avoid abuse, I don’t have a problem with private companies and individual citizens both benefiting. You could easily put rate limits if you think it’s a major issue while still maintaining the free service for smaller users. I personally don’t like the privatization of profits while also maintaining the narrative that companies don’t benefit from public works.

[ImPostingOnHN]

Sure, why not. No problem.

That's a good example of how government open data can support both people and business.

[crote]

Google uses barely any weather data. Perhaps some tornado and wildfire tracking for its datacenters, but that's about it. The vast majority of its potential use comes from Android users, which is... the general public.

And it's not like Google is a charity, you're paying for it either way. The question is: do you want to pay for that weather API via your taxes, or do you want to pay for it via the advertising budget of the products you buy - with Google taking a decent chunk and selling your location data while they are at it?

And it's not like operating a weather API is that hard. You can easily find commercial parties who sell it for less than $1 per million API calls. Assuming you're polling for weather updates every 15 minutes 24/7, that's less than $0.03 of your yearly taxes going towards providing accurate weather information!

[monodeldiablo]

I work in this space. The load on private APIs -- and the management costs in general of reselling government data -- are utterly dwarfed by the upstream costs borne by the government.

The public __already__ pays for Google, The Weather Company, Apple, and really __everybody__ -- down to your local weather person and surf report -- to use weather data on a massive scale.

Government weather data underpins huge chunks of our modern, globalized economy. It should absolutely be better funded and even allowed to directly distribute data to the public and industry. NOAA and NASA et al could be given 10x their current allocation of tax money and you and I would still be getting a great deal.