I wouldn't be too fearful of Google. Certainly they are a very successful
and well-capitalised business, but they haven't really hit all that many
'home runs' outside of search/SEM.

Google is much bigger than, say, Facebook, but Orkut certainly hasn't proven
much of a competitor in that space.

Ditto Google Base didn't exactly blow eBay or Craigslist out of the water.

At the end of the day, what counts is having a thorough understanding of the
'market pain' and focussing on delivering a great solution (for 'focussing'
read 'obsessing').

That is how Google 'won' the Search Engine wars. Google was by no means the
first Search Engine, but it was the first Search Engine start-up that really
focussed on the customer pain (AltaVista, the leading SE at the time, was
conceived of by Digital Equipment Corp. as simply a real-world demonstration
of multi-server database + information retrieval technology - they didn't
actually set out to solve the 'trying to find what you're looking for in the
growing sea of web pages' problem).

Google has too many oars in the water to worry all that much about this
space. A start-up with an absolute focus on a single market pain will beat a
juggernaut every time (well, almost every time :)

Regards,

Mark
-----
Mark Neely
Master Strategist
Infolution Pty Ltd

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