Data-as-a-Service: Factual, InfoChimps & Google Squared

In 2004, Tim O’Reilly’s famous Web 2.0 manifesto suggested that “data would be the next Intel Inside,” and that any Internet service of significance would be underpinned by specialized datasets, such as Amazon’s product database or Foursquare’s places. However, although we’ve seen online office suites added to the portfolio of web worker productivity tools, database apps have been curiously