Sometimes it's not that the data itself doesn't have value, it's that to get the value out of that data requires a lot of blood, toil and treasure in human capital to extract.
That's how data companies make money, by doing that work for you.
> if a dataset is really valuable, it wont be available for public consumption
Data vendors sell valuable data all the time to essentially anyone who is willing to pay their asking price. I don't see how this is any different? Just because aws is trying to run a marketplace doesn't suddenly make the data "public" in an open/free sense, there's still a price tag attached to it.
> and, like nike, won't be selling itself on amazon
Not every data vendor (or retailer since you keep bringing up Nike) has the necessary brand recognition, marketing budget, or technical proficiency to only sell direct to customers: that's why centralized marketplaces and alternate distribution channels exist.
Sorry, I don't agree. There have been a number of successful start-ups that monetized publically available data in their products. Real estate and finance come to mind, but there's a ton of data, you just have to grab it and make sense of it for someone who's will to pay for that service.
Bloomberg usually prevents customers from using their other services and platforms if the customers pay for data from a competing provider. The settlements from lawsuits that follow are only a fraction of what Bloomberg gains by compelling customers to use the Bloomberg suite, so they continue to conduct business this way.
It will be a very busy, but lucrative time for corporate law firms as they battle things out.
