It's the prisoner's dilemma: yeah, everyone on the web would be better off if businesses weren't doing this, but individual businesses will continue to do it as long as it's in their best interest to retain very tight control of and limit third-party access to the data and meta-data they capture from users.

I'm not sure how or even if the infrastructure of a distributed system like the web could be engineered so as to prevent this kind of situation. Perhaps the solution is to build in a system of financial incentives -- not unlike what the Bitcoin folks have done to solve the Byzantine Generals problem. It's an interesting problem.