This week, Google introduced that its Public Information Explorer now lets stop users upload and visualize their own info. Earlier, the visualization tool had only permitted users to review a relatively small group of official data sets from bodies this sort of as the United Nations and Entire world Bank. With this release, Google may possibly be generating a transfer towards the more and more crowded data market, joining Microsoft, IBM, Factual, Infochimps and numerous other folks.

Key to making it straightforward for Google to comprehend the framework of info becoming uploaded is a new encoding format, the Dataset Publishing Language (DSPL), which enables info entrepreneurs to describe structure inside their info (continents contain countries), and requires some rudimentary measures toward encouraging linking concepts between data sets.

Normally, existing options in the area focus on enabling info customers to locate and then download or visualize a single data set offered by an individual else. A lot of also goal information contributors, and concentrate on enabling them to upload and then share or sell specific info sets.

Issues turn into far much more complicated when you want to start combining different information sets, even within a single information market. Normally, it's not what these solutions are developed for, and normally, there is insufficient metadata to allow sensible mixtures. For instance, height of buildings in a single info set blended with height of, say, trees or mountains in yet another is a recipe for disaster if a single is measured in feet and the other in meters. With out information of the models utilised, the recently blended data set is worthless — and, perhaps, dangerously deceptive. Factual is currently carrying out some of the work to tidy data that it collects, but Google's DSPL is an intriguing illustration of encouraging info entrepreneurs to make these points explicit by themselves. Whether it will catch on, or not, continues to be to be observed.

Of course, there's lots a lot more to be stated about data marketplaces, and to read far more, check out my weekly update at GigaOM Professional (subscription needed).