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A few days ago I mentioned Arizona trying to stop Zillow from providing zestimates within their state.

Here’s an update from John Cook’s venture blog:

UPDATE 4/24/07: The bill, including the amendment in support of Zillow, was defeated today by a vote of 32-22 in the Arizona House of Representatives. A spokesman for the Arizona house said that the bill was defeated because it dealt with increasing fees, though he said it was likely that sponsors would re-introduce the legislation along with the amendment related to Zillow.

By the way, John Cook is worth reading if you’re into tracking US ventures, especially on the west coast. He works for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and blogs regularly on entrepreneurial happenings.

Arizona is trying to stop Zillow from providing “zestimates” — their algorithm-based home valuation estimates — on the grounds that Zillow isn’t a licensed appraiser in the state.

That’s just plain silly. Zillow is, so far at least, a benevolent information provider, not a company people need to be protected from. And its estimates are just that: estimates. They should be taken with a grain of salt, just like all other analysis that tries to predict market behavior.

Doc Searls writes about “The Intention Economy” as an alternative to the Attention Economy. Read the rest of this entry »