There is an interesting and short editorial in this weeks Nature about the closure of Google Research Datasets (formally part of Googles Palimpsest project which I learnt about in SciFoo2007 and later in SciFoo2008). Despite the collapse, Amazon is getting into the business of hosting large research data sets for free, which (according to Nature) should inspire greater use of its S3 cloud computing network. For those who can't access Nature you don't need to read their editorial as their tag line says it all:
"Initiatives for digital research infrastructure should focus more on making standardized data openly available, and less on developing new portals."
This is a salient lesson for biodiversity initiatives such as EDIT, EOL, and (less so) BHL. Set free the data and stop building data silos.