Influencing big companies.

I just read an interesting article on CNET (Opening up in self-interest of Google, Microsoft) The bottom line is that both Microsoft and Google are opening up in ways that seem counter to the self interest of each company. Why would they do it? Mostly, because it's good business.

There are a lot of implications to that idea. Some of them are relevant, philosophically, to the way we go about our business of accomplishing our missions. But, there is also a practical issue we should think about, as well.

If you think that open data is good for you, then you should reward companies that let your data be open, by giving them more consideration than companies that make it hard to move your data around. Same for any other aspect of how a company does business. It's all very well to grumble about what a company "should" do. But, it's better, in my opinion, to actually influence companies to actually do those things, if you can. Each customer is an influence, and in some ways small customers have more influence than larger ones, because they have more flexibility to "just say no".

Also, if you TALK about those choices, especially in public forums, and places on the internet like forums, twitter etc. you magnify your influence. Be sure that the big companies follow what's being said quite closely. And if they hear that people are moving out for a particular reason or staying put for another, that will certainly factor into decisions going forward - just as it seems to have done at Microsoft and Google.