A monopoly for a market that doesn't exist yet! (Score:4, Interesting)

A monopoly for a market that doesn't exist yet! (Score:4, Interesting)
by AtariDatacenter (31657) on Wednesday December 26, @03:07PM (#21823736) Homepage
60% of you will underestimate this.20% of you will misunderstand this.10% of you might believe it.10% of you will totally get this.The next step in 'Internet advertising' doesn't exist yet, and doesn't directly center around the web browser and web pages. There is a real integration of three technologies that is coming around the corner, and Google is far ahead of the game than any other player. In fact, most of the other players don't even know the game exists.What is this magic combo?Cellular Data [real time, anyplace, data transport to a computing device] +Internet [not web pages, but providers of location based services (Google)] +GPS [one of the new key data fields that everything will hinge upon]"But we already have those things today!" "This is nothing new!" "My phone currently does all three!"Yes. Those are three discrete services that your phone may have. But are they INTEGRATED?New world example:You're hungry. You want a place to eat. You go to your [smart device]. It could be a cell phone. It could be a Nokia N800 like device. Yes, it could be built into your car like your existing GPS mapping device. It already knows where you are (and shows your position on the default screen). You query (not through a web browser, but an integrated interface) for a nearby fast food restaurant. With me so far? You didn't go to a web page Yahoo! Local or Google Maps. Your map application was built into the device.Quite a number of nearby locations pop up on your map. But there are a few bolded map selections. Arby's has free desert with any meal purchase. Bill & Ruth's sub shop has a discount of $1 towards any sandwich. And some small pizza place you never heard of has a 2-for-1 special. And then there are quite a number of other choices.How did those bolded deals get there? Some large company built up the infrastructure required to run a service where any advertiser (major corporation or little mom-and-pop shops) could put in advertisements at a local level. They've got the transaction engine necessary to take and bill for advertisements. (That would be an existing online advertising company.) They've got the scale to do this on a nationwide (or even worldwide) basis. They've got a yellow pages database. They've got a way to deliver this to consumers.Who has something like this today? The only things close that I've found are Yahoo! Local [yahoo.com], and our friend Google.Google doesn't have all the pieces yet. But they're assembling them. Adsense is going to start allowing location based advertising. (I wish I kept my reference for that.) They're working on an integrated delivery platform to get that to you (Gphone). They practically have all the pieces in place, and they're working towards the goal of making this happen.Now, DoubleClick is a major online advertising company. They could be competition to Google in this future world. But, if Google absorbs DoubleClick before the market even exists, then they can avoid the whole monopoly issue. So Google isn't just playing for the here and now, but they're playing for the future in advertising. Nobody else (such as local telephone companies which maintain their own yellow pages) will be in a position to compete (because they lack everything needed to gather the ads nationwide, and they lack everything needed to present the ads, except for some ownership of the mobile devices). Which... of course... Google managed to take away their walled garden when it comes to the mobile devices allowed on the next generation wireless networks.And Google totally has this figured out. Hello? Google Maps? Want to know what the business looks like that you're heading for? Google street view. Google is totally lining all of its ducks in a row to corner this new market.DoubleClick is an important piece that a potential competitor would need in order to assemble the pieces to compete with Google in this new market. A market which most people don't even see coming. I'm sure the regulators don't either.I did a quick Google on the topic. I haven't found a lot. But at least I see that someone else [wordpress.com] totally gets it. Looks like his observations dovetail in very nicely with my own.Welcome to Web 3.0. What's different about Web 3.0? The Web Browser is no longer the star. Your location is.