EightBlack.

A colleague asked me to talk to a bunch of PhD students at Melbourne University this afternoon.

Obviously, I was the last person on his list.

The topic “Google versus Sensis”. He had a bunch of very intelligent slides discussing the merits of both organisations and their respective business models.

Except for one thing. Sensis doesnt have a business model. Not in the search space anyway.

They’re trying fiercely to protect the dwindling Yellow Pages revenue, and have a bunch of other properties that are so obscure and so distracting that they should jettison everything but WhereIS.

Local and mobile is where all the action is and this in my opinion, is where they should focus all their attention and energy. They’ve also missed out on some critical and key acquisitions that in my opinion they shouldnt have. Take Seek for example. And Webjet. Add Wotif to the mix as well.

They had a chance to take major interests in all of these properties but now, the businesses are either off the market or their valuations are way too high for the Telstra Board to get their heads around.

During the lecture, I might have dropped the “f” word a couple of times. The hell with it. They’re adults right.

One of the PhD grads quizzed me “You’re brainwashed to think nothing but Google…”

No I’m not. Let me ask you this.

• When was the last time any of you picked up a physical Yellow Pages directory?
• When was the last time you tried finding something using Yellow or White pages online?
• When was the last time you used Sensis.com.au
• Do you know what WhereIS provides?
• When was the last time you used “Go Stay”
• When did you last buy a copy of The Trading Post?
• When was the last time you went shopping online using Trading Post.com?
• Do you know what Link Me is?
• And City Search?

Maybe a nod or two when we got to WhereIS and obviously brand awareness is high regarding The Trading Post, because as a business, its been around for 30 years or so. Awareness is one thing. Consumption is entirely different.

After 90 minutes of academia, my head hurt and the lecturer person suggest we head to the pub. Good idea I thought. And apparently, drinking is a mandatory subject when you go to these fine academic establishments. All the PhD folk joined us (something to do with the fact that we were buying the first round). But this one PhD student wouldn’t let go. She was relentless.

“Why are you so pro Google?”

“I’m not” I replied, starting to think that this person obviously had unresolved issues with her parents.

I just cant see the point in an organisation like Sensis, with its resource and customer base of SME’s, trying to play in all markets. Especially search.

She wasnt satisfied and I could sense a real ball breaking was about to occur. Mine.

I looked across the pub to my colleague, hoping that a fight would break out or that the kitchen would implode. Anything to distract my assailant. But my mate was drinking light beer and to be honest, anyone who drinks light beer shouldn’t be depended on to come to your rescue.

I said to this person - lets for the sake of the argument, call her “Bob”.

Look Bob, dont think there isnt life after Google. Search is only 10% solved. There’s plenty left. And I really do hope that right now, in some garage, there are 2 bright people trying to engineer the crap out of Google.

For instance, earlier this week, I met the 23 year old founder of a business called Hippo. What a great idea. They’ve carved out a niche that Seek dont do really well. And thats provide a portal for part time and casual job hunters. Brilliant.

They’ve already raised capital twice and the people who founded Boost Juice are on the board. Bravo.

Bob wasn’t convinced. I’m sure she thought to herself, “that moron just made that up”.

But I didn’t. Go check out Hippo. It’s way cool. And I wish it all the luck in the world.

Subscribe to more posts like this

Related Posts:

Add to | | | View blog reactions

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 5th, 2007 at 2:22 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.