A few short years ago, the Economist made a rather bold statement – that the world’s most valuable resource is data, not oil. At the time, few realized how true this statement was, but Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and Oracle have clearly known about the tremendous value of data for decades.
In the last 20 years, these companies have been working in the shadows to collect, harness, and control the near-limitless power of data. Today, they dominate the global digital advertising market, which is expected to reach $179.77 billion in value by the end of 2021. But it’s not just about advertising – nearly every single industry in the world depends on the information technology systems these companies provide.
Gone are the days when sheiks and oil barons wielded the greatest influence and economic might. Now, a shortlist of tech entrepreneurs and “data barons” – like Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk – have become the most powerful and influential people in the world.
But will their reign last forever?
Finis Conner is no stranger to the world of data. He’s seen disk drives grow from the initial 5-megabyte hard drive he brought to market in 1980 to the 20-terabyte drives that businesses require today. From Conner’s 10,000-foot view of the data landscape, a sea change is on the verge of disrupting the entire data economy. But this time, the trend doesn’t center around the “data barons.” Instead, it has everything to do with the rising power of ordinary people to recover and monetize the value of the data that’s rightfully theirs.
Signs That Data Really Is More Valuable Than Oil
It’s no coincidence that the most valuable companies in the world – except for Saudi Arabian Oil Company (#3) – are the technology firms that own the most data. It’s no coincidence that Apple (#1), Microsoft (#2), Alphabet/Google (#4), Amazon (#5), Tesla (#6), and Facebook (#7) are aggressively acquiring, analyzing, leveraging, and selling the data they collect from billions of global users.
Like oil barons seeking to grow their petroleum reserves, these companies are continually pursuing strategies to increase their reservoirs of data. Last year, the total amount of global data reached 64 zettabytes (64 trillion gigabytes), and Seagate projects that global data will reach 175 zettabytes (175 trillion gigabytes) by 2025.
Most of this data is stored in large data centers – like the “Hive” facility where Facebook adds 4 petabytes (4,000 terabytes) of user data per day, and Google’s millions of servers that maintain an estimated 10 to 15 exabytes (10 to 15 million terabytes) of data. Even Tesla collects massive amounts of data to train sophisticated AI systems for its self-driving cars and arguably sources most of its success from data analysis.
Understanding the Value of Data
The best way to understand the value of data is to look at the billions of dollars in annual revenue that the most powerful technology companies are earning from it. Alphabet (Google’s parent company) used its Search, Gmail, Maps, Youtube, and other platforms – along with the free data from its users – to generate revenue of $65 billion in Q3 2021. About $53 billion of that revenue came from Google’s digital advertising sales, which skyrocketed by 43% during the pandemic.
Meanwhile, Facebook used its social media platforms – and the free data from its users – to generate revenue of $29 billion in Q3 2021. That means the social media giant is collecting about $40 in annual revenue from each of its 2.91 billion monthly active users. Approximately 97% of that revenue comes from digital advertising alone.
Facebook has leveraged its users and their data to corner about 16% of the $180 billion digital advertising market. Alphabet (Google) has done the same to control about 29% of that market.
To understand what’s really going on, Conner suggests, “We should look at the amount of data being created, and the revenue being generated from it. I don’t think people have considered what their data is worth and what they are contributing to this massive market. Just in terms of digital advertising, $180 billion is being made from harvesting other people’s data assets, but none of that revenue is being shared with the people and businesses that are actually creating it.”
Considering the tremendous wealth and power that these firms are gaining through our data, you might think it costs them a lot to acquire it. But in fact, they’re getting all of this data for FREE!