I've written before about the application model called the "Closed Data Pool." In this model, companies (and many times they are competitors) contribute proprietary data to a central, neutral data company. The data company aggregates the data and sells aggregate views of the data back to the very companies that contributed to it. Madness you say? Not really, because these companies get great benefit from those aggregated views (think market share, average pricing, and other vital business metric...