Google and promiscuous distribution of data

September 26, 2007

I have written previously about Google’s interest in large scientific datasets. Attila Csordás, who earlier wrote about dark data, followed up with Jon Trowbridge at Google about Google’s efforts in this direction. While the talk from Scifoo is not available, Attila got permission to upload Jon’s talk up on Slideshare. The presentation is quite similar to the talk at Scifoo, and should give you a good idea about Google’s efforts, specifically the drive array that I talked about in my original post.

One line from the presentation jumps out at you

Ultimate goal: Promiscuous distribution

The way I look at it, Google is saying this - we have the hardware; it doesn’t cost us much, so send it across to us and we will hold it, but not just for you. To me and others that sounds rather cool and the way things should be. To others it is troublesome, and I believe that is because of the subject of data ownership. While one might not agree with the protectionist approaches of scientists when it comes to their data, their apprehension is somewhat understood. This issue will not get resolved till there is a system in place for data ownership, especially for open data. I wonder who are the key players in this discussion? Are organizations like the NCBI, EBI, or the Wellcome Trust involved? I admire Google’s lead in this area, as well as Creative Commons, but the issue is a larger one for the scientific community and there should be more involvement, and more transparency. I suspect the greater scientific community is generally unaware of such efforts (based on purely anecdotal, empirical evidence)

On a related note, Attila has updated his original dark data post with the link to the online version of Thomas Goetz’ article

Technorati Tags: Data, Data Storage, Open Data, Data Ownership