<story><title>Craigslist, LinkedIn, Netflix, and others don&apos;t owe us anything.</title><url>http://monkeymace.com/post/25740159275/craigslist-linkedin-netflix-and-others-dont-owe-us-anyth</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>citricsquid</author><text>I think the reason people here feel this way is because the general consensus among HN users is that the best product wins and that&apos;s all that matters. If a company has a monopoly on data and refuses to provide an API they&apos;re saying that they don&apos;t want to compete on the quality of their product (craigslist for example) they want to keep their position without the benefits to the users.&lt;p&gt;Padmapper made craigslist apartment searches much better, instead of making their own apartment searches better craigslist shut Padmapper&apos;s access to craigslist data down. It shows that they value their own business more than they value the experience of their users, which to a lot of people here isn&apos;t exactly &quot;good&quot;.&lt;p&gt;Companies are free to do with their data whatever they want and they&apos;re free to restrict access to it however they like, sure, but it&apos;s still lame when a company does it because they don&apos;t want to improve their product and don&apos;t like competition.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kenjackson</author><text>&lt;i&gt;If a company has a monopoly on data and refuses to provide an API they&apos;re saying that they don&apos;t want to compete on the quality of their product&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This implies that part of the quality of a product is NOT the ability to gather data.  This would be like me walking into a Walmart, setting up a cash register next to theirs and start ringing up customers and arguing that Walmart can&apos;t compare with my customer service. Ignoring that customer service is just one small part of the business.  Walmart had to find the property, buy the property, do the legal work to get the product on the shevles, the negotiation, the supply chain management, etc...  I can&apos;t just focus on the last mile and then argue that I&apos;m entitled to everything else they did.&lt;p&gt;Craigslist built its name, it&apos;s reputation, it&apos;s backend, it&apos;s API, vetted a business model for its services, scouted out regions to focus on etc...&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, people are arguing the data is the users, not CLs.  True, but the user gave it to CL, not to you.  When I loan books to a neighbor I assume they aren&apos;t going to create a library of my loaned books (unless they specifically told me so).</text></comment>
<story><title>Craigslist, LinkedIn, Netflix, and others don&apos;t owe us anything.</title><url>http://monkeymace.com/post/25740159275/craigslist-linkedin-netflix-and-others-dont-owe-us-anyth</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>citricsquid</author><text>I think the reason people here feel this way is because the general consensus among HN users is that the best product wins and that&apos;s all that matters. If a company has a monopoly on data and refuses to provide an API they&apos;re saying that they don&apos;t want to compete on the quality of their product (craigslist for example) they want to keep their position without the benefits to the users.&lt;p&gt;Padmapper made craigslist apartment searches much better, instead of making their own apartment searches better craigslist shut Padmapper&apos;s access to craigslist data down. It shows that they value their own business more than they value the experience of their users, which to a lot of people here isn&apos;t exactly &quot;good&quot;.&lt;p&gt;Companies are free to do with their data whatever they want and they&apos;re free to restrict access to it however they like, sure, but it&apos;s still lame when a company does it because they don&apos;t want to improve their product and don&apos;t like competition.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>heliodor</author><text>Actually, Craigslist values us, the users, more than most companies. You know how? By leaving so much money on the table that you can&apos;t help but love them! Craigslist is a breath of fresh air in a world where everything is optimized as much as possible to part us from our money!</text></comment>