I’ve written previously about this.
Here’s a great article on Mashable, making the same points, backed up with statistics:
If you need proof that data is king at Google, look no further than In the Plex [the new book about Google]. The word “data” appears in Levy’s book approximately 319 times. “Design,” on the other hand, appears fewer than 60 times.
The word “design” and its variations appears in the Steve Jobs biography 432 times. The word “data” appears just 26 times in the book.
I love it.