The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data
A NEW commodity spawns a lucrative, fast-growing industry, prompting antitrust regulators to step in to restrain those who control its flow. A century ago, the resource in question was oil. Now similar concerns are being raised by the giants that deal in data, the oil of the digital era. These titans—Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft—look unstoppable. They are the five most valuable listed firms in the world. Their profits are surging: they collectively racked up over $25bn in net profit in the first quarter of 2017. Amazon captures half of all dollars spent online in America. Google and Facebook accounted for almost all the revenue growth in digital advertising in America last year.
一种新的大宗商品催生了利润丰厚、增长迅速的行业，促使反垄断监管机构介入，限制那些控制其流动的人。一个世纪以前，讨论的资源是石油。如今，在数据交易中的数字时代的石油巨头，也出现了类似的担忧。这些巨头，像阿尔法特(谷歌的母公司)、亚马逊、苹果、脸书和微软，看起来势不可挡。他们是世界上最有价值的五家上市公司。它们的利润大幅增长:它们在2017年第一季度的净利润合计超过250亿美元。在美国，亚马逊花了一半的钱在网上。去年，谷歌和脸书几乎占据了美国数字广告收入增长的全部份额。
Such dominance has prompted calls for the tech giants to be broken up, as Standard Oil was in the early 20th century. This newspaper has argued against such drastic action in the past. Size alone is not a crime. The giants’ success has benefited consumers. Few want to live without Google’s search engine, Amazon’s one-day delivery or Facebook’s newsfeed. Nor do these firms raise the alarm when standard antitrust tests are applied. Far from gouging consumers, many of their services are free (users pay, in effect, by handing over yet more data). Take account of offline rivals, and their market shares look less worrying. And the emergence of upstarts like Snapchat suggests that new entrants can still make waves.
这种控制地位促使人们呼吁解散科技巨头，就像20世纪初的标准石油公司一样。本报在过去曾反对过这种激烈的行动。规模本身并不是犯罪。这些巨头的成功使消费者受益。几乎没有人愿意在没有谷歌的搜索引擎、亚马逊的一天送达服务或脸书的新闻订阅服务中生活。当标准的反垄断测试被应用时，这些公司也不会拉响警报。他们的许多服务都是免费的(实际上，用户支付更多的是数据)，而不是欺骗消费者。考虑到线下竞争对手，他们的市场份额看起来不那么令人担忧。Snapchat等初创公司的出现表明，新进入者仍然可以掀起波澜。
But there is cause for concern. Internet companies’ control of data gives them enormous power. Old ways of thinking about competition, devised in the era of oil, look outdated in what has come to be called the “data economy”. A new approach is needed.
但我们有理由担心。互联网公司对数据的控制赋予了他们巨大的权力。在石油时代设计的关于竞争的老方法，在被称为“数据经济”的时代显得过时了。需要一种新的方法。
Quantity has a quality all its own 数量本身就有质量
What has changed? Smartphones and the internet have made data abundant, ubiquitous and far more valuable. Whether you are going for a run, watching TV or even just sitting in traffic, virtually every activity creates a digital trace—more raw material for the data distilleries. As devices from watches to cars connect to the internet, the volume is increasing: some estimate that a self-driving car will generate 100 gigabytes per second. Meanwhile, artificial-intelligence (AI) techniques such as machine learning extract more value from data. Algorithms can predict when a customer is ready to buy, a jet-engine needs servicing or a person is at risk of a disease. Industrial giants such as GE and Siemens now sell themselves as data firms.
什么变化了呢?智能手机和互联网使数据变得丰富，无处不在，而且更有价值。无论你是去跑步、看电视，还是只是坐在交通工具中，几乎所有的活动都为数据蒸馏厂创造了一个数字追踪的原材料。随着从手表到汽车的设备连接到互联网，数据体积也在增加:有人估计自动驾驶汽车每秒钟将产生100千兆字节。与此同时，人工智能(AI)技术，如机器学习，从数据中提取出更多的价值。算法可以预测客户何时需要购买，喷气发动机是否需要维修，或者一个人是否有患病的风险。像通用电气和西门子这样的工业巨头，现在把自己作为数据公司出售。
This abundance of data changes the nature of competition. Technology giants have always benefited from network effects: the more users Facebook signs up, the more attractive signing up becomes for others. With data there are extra network effects. By collecting more data, a firm has more scope to improve its products, which attracts more users, generating even more data, and so on. The more data Tesla gathers from its self-driving cars, the better it can make them at driving themselves—part of the reason the firm, which sold only 25,000 cars in the first quarter, is now worth more than GM, which sold 2.3m. Vast pools of data can thus act as protective moats.
这种丰富的数据改变了竞争的本质。科技巨头总是从网络效应中受益：脸书注册的用户越多，它对别人的吸引力就越大。有了数据，就会产生额外的网络效应。通过收集更多的数据，一家公司有更多的空间来改进它的产品，它吸引更多的用户，产生更多的数据，等等。特斯拉在自动驾驶汽车上收集的数据越多，就越能让他们的自动驾驶汽车做的越好——这也是为什么该公司今年第一季度只卖出了2.5万辆汽车，但现在的价值超过了通用汽车，后者卖出了230万辆。因此，大量的数据可以起到保护作用。
Access to data also protects companies from rivals in another way. The case for being sanguine about competition in the tech industry rests on the potential for incumbents to be blindsided by a startup in a garage or an unexpected technological shift. But both are less likely in the data age. The giants’ surveillance systems span the entire economy: Google can see what people search for, Facebook what they share, Amazon what they buy. They own app stores and operating systems, and rent out computing power to startups. They have a “God’s eye view” of activities in their own markets and beyond. They can see when a new product or service gains traction, allowing them to copy it or simply buy the upstart before it becomes too great a threat. Many think Facebook’s $22bn purchase in 2014 of WhatsApp, a messaging app with fewer than 60 employees, falls into this category of “shoot-out acquisitions” that eliminate potential rivals. By providing barriers to entry and early-warning systems, data can stifle competition.
获取数据是保护企业免受竞争对手的影响的另一种方式。对科技行业的竞争保持乐观的理由也许会是，现有企业可能会被一家还在车库里的初创企业，或者是一场意想不到的技术变革打的措手不及。但在数据时代，两者都不太可能出现。巨头公司的监视系统跨越了整个经济:谷歌可以看到人们在搜索什么，Facebook知道他们分享什么，亚马逊清楚他们买什么。他们拥有应用商店和操作系统，并将计算能力出租给初创公司。他们对自己的市场和其他领域的活动有着“上帝的视角”。当一种新的产品或服务获得了吸引力时，他们可以看到，这一他们就可以在这样的产品或服务变成一种巨大威胁之前，就可以复制或简单地购买它。许多人认为，Facebook在2014年以220亿美元的价格收购WhatsApp，这是一款只有不到60名员工的通讯应用软件，属于“枪战收购”，可以消除潜在的竞争对手。通过在进入设置障碍和早期预警系统，数据可以抑制竞争。
Who ya gonna call, trustbusters?
The nature of data makes the antitrust remedies of the past less useful. Breaking up a firm like Google into five Googlets would not stop network effects from reasserting themselves: in time, one of them would become dominant again. A radical rethink is required—and as the outlines of a new approach start to become apparent, two ideas stand out.
数据的性质使得过去的反垄断补救措施变得不那么有用了。将谷歌这样的公司拆分为5个谷歌公司不会阻止网络效应的再次出现:随着时间的推移，他们中的一个将再次成为主导。彻底的反思是必要的，随着新方法的轮廓开始显现，有两种观点脱颖而出。
The first is that antitrust authorities need to move from the industrial era into the 21st century. When considering a merger, for example, they have traditionally used size to determine when to intervene. They now need to take into account the extent of firms’ data assets when assessing the impact of deals. The purchase price could also be a signal that an incumbent is buying a nascent threat. On these measures, Facebook’s willingness to pay so much for WhatsApp, which had no revenue to speak of, would have raised red flags. Trustbusters must also become more data-savvy in their analysis of market dynamics, for example by using simulations to hunt for algorithms colluding over prices or to determine how best to promote competition.
首先，反垄断当局需要从工业时代转移到21世纪。例如，在考虑合并时，他们传统上使用规模来决定何时进行干预。在评估交易的影响时，他们需要考虑公司数据资产的规模。购买价格也可能是一个信号，即现存的公司正在购买一种新生的具有威胁的公司。从这些考量上，Facebook在WhatsApp没有任何收入可言的情况下，愿意为WhatsApp支付如此多的费用，这些可以引起人们的警觉。反托拉斯者在分析市场动态时也必须变得更加精通数据，例如通过使用模拟来寻找算法与价格之间的合谋，来决定最好的促进竞争的方式。
The second principle is to loosen the grip that providers of online services have over data and give more control to those who supply them. More transparency would help: companies could be forced to reveal to consumers what information they hold and how much money they make from it. Governments could encourage the emergence of new services by opening up more of their own data vaults or managing crucial parts of the data economy as public infrastructure, as India does with its digital-identity system, Aadhaar. They could also mandate the sharing of certain kinds of data, with users’ consent—an approach Europe is taking in financial services by requiring banks to make customers’ data accessible to third parties.
第二个原则是放松网络服务提供商对数据的控制，并对提供这些服务的人给予更多的控制。更多的透明度将会有所帮助:企业可以被迫向消费者披露他们持有的信息，以及他们从中获得了多少资金。政府可以通过开放更多的自己的数据库，或者将数据经济的关键部分管理作为公共基础设施，从而鼓励新服务的出现，就像印度的数字身份系统Aadhaar一样。他们还可以要求在用户的同意的情况下，共享某些类型的数据，这也是欧洲正在接受金融服务的一种方式，即要求银行将客户的数据提供给第三方。
Rebooting antitrust for the information age will not be easy. It will entail new risks: more data sharing, for instance, could threaten privacy. But if governments don’t want a data economy dominated by a few giants, they will need to act soon.
重新启动信息时代的反托拉斯法并不容易。这将带来新的风险:例如，更多的数据共享可能会威胁到隐私。但是，如果政府不想要一个由少数巨头主导的数据经济，他们就需要尽快行动起来。
This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "The world’s most valuable resource"
antitrust: adj. [经] 反垄断的；[经] 反托拉斯的
spawn: vt/vi. 产卵；酿成，造成；大量生产 n. 卵；菌丝；产物
rack up: 击倒，获胜, 累计 eg. Anyone taking all these flights over a year might rack up a carbon footprint totalling more than 35 tonnes.
revenue growth: 收入增长
argue against: 反对；据理反对；争辩
gouge: vt. 用半圆凿子挖；欺骗 n. 沟；圆凿；以圆凿刨 eg. He took a knife and gouged a hole in the bottom of the boat.
make waves: v. 捣蛋；兴风作浪
ubiquitous: adj. 普遍存在的；无所不在的
vast pools of: 大量的
moat: vt. 将…围以壕沟 n. 护城河；壕沟
sanguine: adj. 乐观的；满怀希望的；面色红润的vt. 血染；以血沾污
rest on: 停留在；依靠；被搁在；信赖
blindside: vt. 攻其不备 eg. Their car was blindsided by a bus at the intersection
rent out: 租出
stand out: 突出；站出来；坚持到底；坚决反对
savvy: vt/vi. 理解；懂 n. 悟性；理解能力；懂行的人
collude: vi. 勾结；串通；共谋
data vault: 电子资料室
entail: vt. 使需要，必需；承担；遗传给；蕴含 n. 引起；需要；继承 eg. A new computer system entails a lot of re-training.