The Web Commons Data Project is a great idea because product data on the web is a mess and pretty much useless. Today, fining parts and components is extremely difficult, time consuming and error prone. Neither Google or Amazon have solved this problem despite their tremendous search capabilities. This is why many companies have developed internal parts catalogs and approved supplier lists.
The reason for structured data is so we can find products, parts or components on the web. Beyond that, we should be able to use the structured data in our own work. The amount of time wasted finding product information is huge. Once the product is found, it is rekeyed into countless spreadsheets. If we had good, structured product data, we should be able to just use it in our own spreadsheets.
Companies that have built internal product catalogs and used them to rationalize parts have created huge value. Whirlpool, for instance, generated $2.7B in free cash flow over two years by rationalizing components and their supplychain.
What we really need is a universally updatable data structure which would enable companies to publish their component data and for us to effortlessly consume it. In full disclosure, I have been working on this problem for a number of years after founding Convergence Data Services. If you are interested in discussing more. Let me know.
