“A NEW commodity spawns a lucrative, fast-growing industry, prompting antitrust regulators to step in to restrain those who control its flow. A century ago, the resource in question was oil. Now similar concerns are being raised by the giants that deal in data, the oil of the digital era.“

The Economist just penned an interesting piece arguing that the world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data. That’s why the five most valuable publicly traded companies in the world are all tech/data companies.

But the point they are really making is that current antitrust remedies are poorly suited to this new precious commodity. For example, in today’s world authorities need to be thinking not just about firm size, but about the extent of their data collection.

There’s a reason firms with no (meaningful) revenue get acquired for huge numbers. Yes, sometimes it’s just for the talent. But it’s also because of the data they control and the potential threat they pose.

So much of what we do today leaves a digital trace. And those traces are hugely valuable. I suspect we will be hearing more about this as the data economy continues to spawn tech giants.