The Next Google?

One interesting bit of news over the last month is that Google is going public. One thing I find amazing about Google is how it was able to become so dominant. Back in the 90's, when Yahoo was the king of search engines, who would have thought a new company could come in and take over. Also, Yahoo wasn't the only one. There were also tons of others such as excite, lycos, altavista, etc.

But with a truely better search technology, easy and simple interface, and a sensible revenue model, they succeeded even when they came late to the search engine business. I believe there are many Google's to be made in the next 10 years on the internet. Here are some of my guesses about businesses that could be the next Google.

• Digital Marketplace - One area of the web that is just barely starting to grow is the digital marketplace. This is a place that makes it easy for people to buy and sell their digital content such as music, books, videos, and images. The web should significantly lower the cost of these items to people in two ways. First, the web provides a much more efficient way of delivering these items: no manufacturing, no physical delivery. Second, it helps to reduce the middlemen like the studios and publishers.

  Lulu.com is one example of a digital marketplace provider. Payloadz.com is another. Both seem pretty small now, but in the next few years, I see these businesses growing. There still is the challenge to filter out the low quality content and highlight the quality.

• Education - Seems like tuition rates are in a never ending spiral upward, growing faster than inflation. With the web, this should end. Perhaps for public schools (K through 12), the web's impact may not be huge. But for college and adult education, the web should help dramatically. For adults, I believe the classical teaching environment awith a small instructor led class is very cost inefficient. Pure online classes should be able to greatly reduce the costs without affecting the learning. There might be occasional offline activities for tests. But most of the class could be implemented with online class syllabus, notes, message boards, web logs, videos, etc.

  In addition to the accredited education courses, I think there's opportunity for informal online education. I imagine it like a book club that would concentrate on non fiction. It could be similar to a message forum but would be time limited and follow a syllabus. Student notes could consist of web logs that would not only function as personal notes but also to help others in comprehending the material. This is just one idea. I see a lot of growth in online education over the next several years.

• Classifieds - Ebay is now the undisputed leader in auctions. They also have areas that are a lot like classifieds in which a set price can be placed on an item for a specific city. Also, most newspapers are setting up online classifieds to complement their paper versions. There are also many niche classified sites that exist for dating, cars, real estate.

  Newspapers should be worried. One thing to consider is that I can get a free email account just about anywhere on the web which allows me to keep megabytes of information almost indefinitely. Also similar, free blog services exist everywhere which allow posting of megabytes of info. So for classifieds, why pay for posting a few hundred bytes of info that lasts only a couple of days? Free online classifieds should be able to allow at least as much space as email and blogs. People can post pictures of what they are selling and detailed descriptions. The classified sites should be able to provide extensive search capability to allow people to find exactly what they are looking for. These things should make online classifieds much more useful than offline newspaper classifieds.

  To fund classifieds, advertising should be effective. It should be no less effective than advertising done in free email or blog services. And the cost of storage, servers, and bandwidth is constantly decreasing. Not only should newspapers be worried, but also ebay should be worried. I see a lot of opportunity in this. One interesting free classified site is craigslist which provides free classified services for all non-employment categories. It also has a lot of other great community features.

• Politics - The web seems to be the perfect place to educate people about political issues. Candidates should no longer have to pay huge sums to buy TV, radio, newspaper commercials. Ideally, a site would be available where people could go and learn about the issues. Discussion forums could exist that allow people to probe into the issues. The site could allow people to get a quick and fair view into the candidates and the issues, plus, it could allow people to dive down into the issues to really understand them. All this could be done very cheaply with the web. There is one site that is something like this, but it still has a long way to go, especially on local politics. It's Project Vote Smart.

  Candidates are starting to use the web more effectively, but there is still a long way to go. I believe every political leader or candidate should have their own blog where they describe the issues, philosophies, and policies. The national ones like Dean and Kerry already have ones (although most entries are done by their aids). More local candidates need to have them, and the majority of entries should be by them, not their aids. They should consider their blogs not only as a campaign tool but also as an education tool that can make the political issues interesting.

Google has shown that there is a lot of room for growth on the internet, even in areas that you might assume are pretty crowded. It'll be interesting to see who'll be the next Google.

posted by Ken on 5:45 AM permalink and comments  

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