Proteomics data is growing faster than storage budgets. AI demand is driving up hardware prices. The format debate is a distraction. Compression tools exist but nobody uses them. The real problem is that storage is an unaccounted line item, and the field optimizes for generation, not retention.

The search engine space is crowded, fast-moving, and genuinely competitive. DIA-NN, Spectronaut, FragPipe, MaxQuant, and Sage each carved a niche. A Zig-based search engine is not the right next step. The gap between engines might be.

Thermo locks its format behind Windows DLLs. Bruker does better. Spectronaut adds its own proprietary layer on top. Open formats are inevitable, but the real bottleneck is proprietary converters in the middle.