Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

It's interesting to think about from a different angle:

Paul Graham once wrote that "information wants to be free", and that there are very few areas in which you can make a significant revenue by selling information, financial information being the exception.

$6B ($9b) seems to be the upper bound of revenue for an information product (company). And Bloomberg has unusually wide moat.



Minor correction: it was Stewart Brand (of Whole Earth Catalog fame) who said "Information wants to be free". Paul Graham may have quoted it -- along with a multitude of others, since it was first uttered in 1984.

Actually turns out the original quote attributed to Brand is not quite right. There is a qualifier ("Information almost wants to be free"), but that qualifier dropped off along the way.

See http://www.digitopoly.org/2015/10/25/information-wants-to-be...


Thanks for the correction! I recall that I learned the phrase from pg's writing or talk, and it has stuck with me since so I mistakenly attributed it to pg.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: