magery services, "Images copyright Digital Globe. These companies made substantial investments in their databases( NavTeq alone reportedly invested $750 million to build their database of street addresses and directions. Digital Globe spent $500 million to launch their own satellite to improve on government-supplied imagery )NavTeq has gone so far as to imitate Intel's familiar Intel Inside logo: Cars with navigation systems ar the imprint, "NavTeq onboard Data is indeed the Intel Inside of these applications a sole source component in systems whose software infrastructure is largely open source or otherwise commodified The now hotly contested web mapping arena demonstrates how a failure to understand the importance of plications core data will eventually undercut its competitive positi mapping category in 1995, yet when Yahoo!, and then Microsoft, and most recently Google, decided to enter the market, they were easily able to offer a competing application simply by licensing the same data Contrast, however, the position of Amazon. com. Like competitors such as Barnesandnoble. com, its original database came from ISBN registry provider R.R. Bowker. But unlike MapQuest, Amazon relentlessly enhanced the data, adding publisher-supplied data such as cover images, table of contents, index, and sample material Even more importantly they harnessed their users to annotate the data, such that after ten years, Amazon, not Bowker, is the primary source for bibliographic data on books, a reference source for scholars and librarians as well as consumers. Amazon also introduced their own proprietary identifier, the AsIN, which corresponds to the IsBN where one is present, and creates an equivalent namespace for products without one. Effectively, Amazon embraced and extended their data suppliers Imagine if MapQuest had done the same thing, hamessing their users to annotate maps and directions, adding layers of value. It would have been much more difficult for competitors to enter the market just by licensing the se oa The recent introduction of Google Maps provides a living laboratory for the competition between application vendors and their data suppliers. Google's lightweight programming model has led to the creation of numerous value-added services in the form of mashups that link Google Maps with other internet-accessible data sources Paul Rademacher's housingmaps. com, which combines Google Maps with Craigslist apartment rental and home purchase data to create an interactive housing search tool, is the pre-eminent example of such a mashup At present, these mashups are mostly innovative experiments, done by hackers. But entrepreneurial activity follows close behind And already, one can see that for at least one class of developer Google has taken the role of data source away from Navteq and inserted themselves as a favored intermediary. we expect to see battles between data suppliers and application vendors in the next few years, as both realize just how important certain classes of data will become as building blocks for Web 2.0 applications The race is on to own certain classes of core data: location, identity, calendaring of public events, product re is significant cost to create th opportunity for an Intel Inside style play, with a single source for the data. In others, the winner will be the company that first reaches critical mass via user aggregation, and turns that aggregated data into a system service For example, in the area of identity Pay Pal, Amazons 1-click, and the millions of users of communications ystems, may all be legitimate contenders to build a network-wide identity database.(In this regard, Google'simagery services, "Images copyright Digital Globe." These companies made substantial investments in their databases (NavTeq alone reportedly invested $750 million to build their database of street addresses and directions. Digital Globe spent $500 million to launch their own satellite to improve on government -supplied imagery.) NavTeq has gone so far as to imitate Intel's familiar Intel Inside logo: Cars with navigation systems bear the imprint, "NavTeq Onboard." Data is indeed the Intel Inside of these applications, a sole source component in systems whose software infrastructure is largely open source or otherwise commodified. The now hotly contested web mapping arena demonstrates how a failure to understand the importance of owning an application's core data will eventually undercut its competitive position. MapQuest pioneered the web mapping category in 1995, yet when Yahoo!, and then Microsoft, and most recently Google, decided to enter the market, they were easily able to offer a competing application simply by licensing the same data. Contrast, however, the position of Amazon.com. Like competitors such as Barnesandnoble.com, its original database came from ISBN registry provider R.R. Bowker. But unlike MapQuest, Amazon relentlessly enhanced the data, adding publisher-supplied data such as cover images, table of contents, index, and sample material. Even more importantly, they harnessed their users to annotate the data, such that after ten years, Amazon, not Bowker, is the primary source for bibliographic data on books, a reference source for scholars and librarians as well as consumers. Amazon also introduced their own proprietary identifier, the ASIN, which corresponds to the ISBN where one is present, and creates an equivalent namespace for products without one. Effectively, Amazon "embraced and extended" their data suppliers. Imagine if MapQuest had done the same thing, harnessing their users to annotate maps and directions, adding layers of value. It would have been much more difficult for competitors to enter the market just by licensing the base data. The recent introduction of Google Maps provides a living laboratory for the competition between application vendors and their data suppliers. Google's lightweight programming model has led to the creation of numerous value-added services in the form of mashups that link Google Maps with other internet-accessible data sources. Paul Rademacher's housi ngmaps.com, which combines Google Maps with Craigslist apartment rental and home purchase data to create an interactive housing search tool, is the pre-eminent example of such a mashup. At present, these mashups are mostly innovative experiments, done by hackers. But entrepreneurial activity follows close behind. And already, one can see that for at least one class of developer, Google has taken the role of data source away from Navteq and inserted themselves as a favored intermediary. We expect to see battles between data suppliers and application vendors in the next few years, as both realize just how important certain classes of data will become as building blocks for Web 2.0 applications. The race is on to own certain classes of core data: location, identity, calendaring of public events, product identifiers and namespaces. In many cases, where there is significant cost to create the data, there may be an opportunity for an Intel Inside style play, with a single source for the data. In others, the winner will be the company that first reaches critical mass via user aggregation, and turns that aggregated data into a system service. For example, in the area of identity, PayPal, Amazon's 1-click, and the millions of users of communications systems, may all be legitimate contenders to build a network-wide identity database. (In this regard, Google's