Why is barcode data so hard to find?

I had a concept that seemed easy enough, and step 1 was identifying products from their barcode. I tried it on a couple items (Bose speaker, wifi router) in my house and the scanning apps couldn't identify them. These aren't once-off products made by a home inventor, or a bag of apples from a local producer. It's Bose.

Googling open barcode databases hasn't been useful. What's the blocker here? Do people get sued? Not enough motivation? Not enough momentum? Does the effort force people to charge for this?

There don't seem to be that many e.g. electronic products in the world, but obviously my intuition is broken on this. What's up with barcodes, HN?