Whose data is it anyway?

Breaking News : The Delhi High Court today asked InfoMedia 18( part of the TV18 group) to stop its site askme.in from functioning until next hearing. I just checked their site and it gave a 503 - Not available message.

JustDial claims Infomedia 18 copied its extensive database which is its key competitive advantage. Now, the big question is who owns the data that a website indexes and displays to the viewers for free? Does the method of copying even matter? The answer to this question could have huge implications for well-known sites in India which rely on such freely available data. I , for one, do not believe that all local search and classifieds websites built up their database organically from scratch, talking to each business owner in the process.

Another way of asking the same question : If your website shows up in google search, does it mean google owns the exclusive right to displaying it ( and other search engines cannot?)

 

Read more at MobiKwik.com Blog

Why Indian web companies build crappy products?

Actually, the title of the post is misleading. Indian companies are very good at building good web products, but only when someone else is defining and managing the product. There are very few who can define and then iteratively build excellent products. Therefore, hold no grudge against the investors who invest in replicated ideas and US-returned expats.

What are the reasons?

1) Most Indian web companies  "do not" consider their product as a key competitive advantage. In that sense, they are much more like media companies , always focused on more eyeballs leading to more advertisement moolah. Those that do have a non-ad revenue model, rely on their alliances or their sales teams.

2) Indian web companies focus much more on marketing than they ever do on the product. Most big web companies are just "online" extensions of their offline businesses. The culture of product innovation just isn't there because all of them get their job done at the same outsourcing shops. There is no overarching product vision just feature additions.

3) Indian software engineers have not been exposed to the latest and the best, even though Indians are no.2 or 3 in Techcrunch readership. This is mostly because the managers and the VP's have themselves never been software engineers. They hardly know their HTML5 from their XML.

4) Sadly, most software engineers are neither risk takers nor good coders nor do they enjoy their jobs. More importantly, very few have that attitude of curiosity which spurs innovation. Combined with 3) , it just becomes a chicken and egg problem.

What do you think?
 

Read more at MobiKwik.com Blog