<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 5/6/05, <b class="gmail_sendername">Donavan Stanley</b> <<a href="mailto:geckofiend@gmail.com">geckofiend@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<br>I find it amazing that a company who provides a fantasic service to<br>our poprject gets treated like the bad guy so often. First, dealing<br>with individual customers is not in Tribune's buisness model. Second<br>even if it *was* their model there's not enough users to make a market
<br>for a company of that size. And last, they're well aware of the fact<br>that people would go right back to scraping.<br><br>The free DataDirect offering saves Tribune money just by virtue of<br>being there so people don't scrape their website. That alone ensures
<br>it's survival. That being said, it's also a stagnant product. It'll<br>never get any new features, new data or anything like that.</blockquote><div><br>
<br>
Sorry to sounds like a pessimist here but Tribune never does anything
without a reason. Take for example their <a href="http://cars.com">cars.com</a> website. Did
you know that the only companies allowed to upload listings (from
dealers, not individuals) are companies that are owned by one of
the newspaper companies that are directly involved with the site? An
independent newspaper can't even get a quote on how much it costs.<br>
<br>
Tribune, Gannet and Knight Ridder (all owners of <a href="http://cars.com">cars.com</a>) have been
buying up all of the independent newspapers around the county in order
to gain a oligopoly in the industry. To say that they are doing this
just to keep people from scraping their data is foolhardy. What they
have managed to do is gain the goodwill of the community in order to
make everyone rely on their data direct service. <br>
<br>
Think of it this way, replace Tribune with Microsoft and tell me if you would feel the same way. There is always an angle.<br>
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