If we free up more data, and enable data to circulate more, should we expect the emergence of new oligopolies such as Google? Is there a rich-getting-richer effect on data, and is it more likely to happen the more freely data circulates? Or is this concentration effect more likely to happen in a context where data does NOT circulate freely?

The analogy comes from a 2003 Clay Shirky comment on blogging, where he suggests that greater freedom leads to power law distributions:

In systems where many people are free to choose between many options, a small subset of the whole will get a disproportionate amount of traffic (or attention, or income), even if no members of the system actively work towards such an outcome.