Dialing for Domains

ENUM, an initiative we first reported on in March 2001, seems to be finally picking up steam. Originally spearheaded by VeriSign and Telcordia Technologies , the initiative attempts to bridge the Internet, Phones, Fax and Wireless with a single contact address -- your phone number. The UK Government is seriously involved in efforts to stimulate the growth of ENUM in the United Kingdom , adding to a general endorsement of ENUM by the U.S. Department of Commerce last year.
In essence, ENUM is a distributed database that translates telephone numbers to IP addresses, which means that phone numbers could be used in place of, or in addition to, domain names. Currently, when you enter www.infocommercereport.com into your browser, Domain Name Servers (DNS) perform a lookup up on that name, find that it is associated with a specific IP address, and take your browser there. ENUM works identically, and is actually integrated into the existing DNS infrastructure.

Interestingly, ENUM can do more than a one-to-one translation to an IP address. It can also link to email addresses, instant messaging identities and cell phone numbers. It's also important to note that ENUM is designed to be queried by machines as well as humans, meaning that all sorts of interesting applications to perform seamless communications are likely to emerge, not the least of which might be streamlining voice over IP (VoIP) call connection.

A lot of governments seem excited about ENUM as a way to bridge the wired phone network with the Internet. Needless to say, the usual suspects in the domain registration space are all circled around ENUM, hoping to become the central registration, and hoping to tap into all the associated registration fees.

Fees? Well, somebody has to pay for all this somehow, and the current notion seems to be to use the existing model for domain registration. And with all those millions of consumers out there hankering for ENUM, revenues could be huge.

Consumers? Hankering? Here we go again. Develop a new technology, and everybody immediately assumes a consumer market exists, primarily because they want a consumer market to exist. After all, there are far more consumers than businesses out there. Businesses want to be contacted, and they want to make the contact process as simple as possible. Is the same true of consumers? Will millions of them rush out to link and expose all their electronic contact data in a searchable public database? I suspect that caution will figure into this at some point.

As to hankering, I have to ask, just as I did with the national cell phone directory: does the market really want this? It's a huge issue, because not just revenue is at stake, but the ability to achieve a critical mass of listings, without which nobody will bother to use ENUM, and the whole initiative will collapse. Too much ambition and greed too early means the almost certain death of ENUM.

Governments are behind ENUM in the general belief that it will lead to technological progress, and hey, they're not paying for it (and they may well tax it). The big companies involved in ENUM see big profit opportunities, although ENUM has all the characteristics of technology in search of an application. And unlike directory assistance and the white pages, there's no opportunity to impose "unlisted number" fees because the database does not exist, and it depends on consumers to populate it.

It will be interesting to see how ENUM evolves, but in my opinion, success will depend on scaling it down before ramping it up.

Stop The Presses: Google's Entering the Content Biz

Google, not being content merely indexing all the free content in the world, has just announced the introduction of Google Print, a new service designed to index the full text of books. Since books are rarely plopped onto the Web in full form free for the taking, Google is now actively striking deals with book publishers for access to the contents of their books. Most significant of all: Google won't give away the full contents of the books it indexes. Rather, it will show only a few pages of the book to show the user's search term in context. If the user wants more, Google will provide links to online retailers where users can buy the book. Yes, Google is now supporting and facilitating the sale of content! This is huge.

Consider the possibilities: subscription-based database and directory publishers can use this new service to merchandise their products and develop direct online sales. This approach, adapted properly to the special issues of database publishers, could prove significantly more powerful as a sales tool than buying search terms. Since Google wants to aggressively grow this new area, it's also likely to remain free for some time.

Initially, Google says it wants to provide online purchasing links to online book retailers such as Amazon. My guess is that this is a temporary gambit because Google doesn't want to look like it's trying to compete with Amazon. While I don't see Google getting into online bookselling, what seems inevitable to me is that Google will ultimately offer links direct to publishers, for a fee, so that participating publishers can sell directly. That's critical for serials publishers, who need to capture the customer's name and address to generate renewal sales. The only way to get this information is to cut the book retailer out of the picture, and Google's platform could make this happen. By the way, Google Print could be a boon to the e-book business, because if you've found a book through a Web search, my guess is you want to get your hands on it sooner rather than later, and e-books provide that through instant downloads.

I've always liked the integration of paid content with free content via search. I first saw it with the old Northern Light service many years ago, and it seems to be coming back into fashion again. You can argue about the best ways to co-mingle free and paid content, but everybody seems to agree that overall it's a good idea.

To my mind, the best part about co-mingling free and paid content is that it offers a constant if subtle reminder to search engine users that not all content is free. The most damaging aspect of the big search engines is that they have inadvertently created a perception that they offer most if not all of the information in the world for free. Those of us who sell content have all been hurt by this. That the biggest search engine of them all will soon start including and merchandising paid content is absolutely a good thing. To the extent we can use it to better sell our own products it's an even better thing.

Google Desktop: Blurring the Lines

I must say I am enormously impressed with my initial experience with the new Google Desktop tool which creates a miniature search engine on my local computer. I was stunned at how easy it is to locate information on my hard drive, including items I had lost, forgotten, and even some I thought I had erased.

To download this remarkable and free new tool, simply go to http://desktop.google.com and you’ll be just a few mouse clicks away from installing it on your hard drive. The installation is one of the smoothest and easiest I have ever experienced. This is due in large part to the compact size of the software. Once installed, the application fires itself up, and immediately starts indexing your hard drive, including all documents, emails, notes, presentations. In fact, Google Desktop will also archive and index all your Instant Message exchanges. My only disappointment so far was learning that it doesn’t index the contents of PDF files. "Our goal is to have it behave like a photographic memory for your computer," said Marissa Mayer, Google's director of consumer Web products. That’s a laudable goal, but when exact copies of things start getting made, copyright questions immediately start to surface.

I say this because in addition to indexing your own information on your computer, Google Desktop also stores and indexes an exact copy of every Web page you visit. This could arguably put the user in violation of copyright law as well as violating the terms of use conditions of some sites. "Fair use," the common defense against claims of copyright infringement, is a bit murky and often in the eye of the beholder. The same holds true for users of paid access subscription sites (Web pages delivered with SSL encryption can also be indexed by Google Desktop by the way). One possible nightmare scenario: a user purchases one-day access to a content site, and uses the Google Desktop to capture huge amounts of information, all automatically indexed for easy future retrieval. Further compounding the issue is that Google Desktop is integrated into your Web browser, blurring the lines not only between personal and Web-based content, but where that content resides, and the ownership of that content as well. Yes, you can engage in serious content piracy without Google Desktop. My point is that it's just gotten significantly easier, and some people may end up doing it without even realizing it.

Google certainly didn’t create this problem: other desktop indexing tools already exist (and you can count on a lot more in the near future), but it is taking it to a new level by making the capture of Web-based data automatic, seamless and essentially invisible to the user. And it’s one more encroachment to which content producers will need to remain alert.

BellSouth: Selling Up or Selling Out?

BellSouth Advertising and Publishing, the yellow pages arm of BellSouth, has announced that it has become an authorized agent for Google, and will market Google paid search programs through its vaunted 2,000 person strong sales force.

BellSouth and other yellow pages publishers such as Dex Media had previously created Web advertising bundles that they had been offering to their customers. These bundles consisted of various combinations of Web site hosting, Web site design, and entry-level paid search programs. However, this move by BellSouth greatly changes the playing field. It also appears to be an admission by BellSouth that paid search has become more than an optional add-on, and that search engine advertising is as compelling to advertisers as its own online yellow pages offering.

This deal also suggests some recognition by Google that to crack the potentially huge market for local advertising, it needs feet on the street, and that its self-service approach to sales and customer service fails to cut it with smaller and less sophisticated advertisers.

Can this marriage work? For BellSouth salespeople to successfully sell Google paid search programs in conjunction with print and online yellow pages, they're going to have deal with some sticky questions: Does Google replace the need for my online yellow pages advertising? How much of my yellow pages budget should I allocate now to Google? How come Google offers pay-for-performance pricing and you don't? One thing that is certain is that smaller advertisers are much more likely to re-allocate their existing ad budget to participate in Google than find new dollars to participate in Google. That means a real risk of revenue loss for BellSouth.

It's also important to remember that while corporate executives can make all the plans and sign all the deals they want, if the sales force doesn't buy in, they will not succeed. What kinds of things does yellow pages sale organization like? Simple, quick, easy, add-on sales that in no way jeopardize their existing revenue or commissions. The Google deal fails all these criteria.

My prediction: the BellSouth sales force will ultimately submarine this deal. Google will end up no worse for wear, and BellSouth will realize that repping their competition is not in their best interest. I'd also like to reiterate that what really may be making paid search so attractive is its pay-for-performance model. If so, BellSouth may want to take a look at Verizon's deal with FindWhat as perhaps a better path.

Online Users Seeking e-Quality

The USC Annenberg School ' s Center for the Digital Future has just released results of a nationwide survey in year four of an ambitious ten year project to monitor how the Internet is influencing all aspects of American life. A noteworthy finding was that users are at last acknowledging that not all online information is created equal.

For the second year in a row, the study found a decline in the number of users who believe that "most information on the Web is reliable and accurate." The figure is now down to 48.8%. The number of users who believe that "only about half the information on the Web is reliable and accurate" continues to grow, and now stands at 41.5%.

How do users determine quality? The answer in a word appears to be "brand." Users consistently rated the information quality of "established media" and government Web sites higher than Web sites of individuals (which I read to include small and unknown media sites as well). According to the study, 62.1% of users believe that established media Web sites are "mostly reliable and accurate" and 56.5% of users believe that government Web sites are "mostly reliable and accurate." The percentages rise even higher when the study looks only at users who've been using the Web for a number of years.

I've suggested for several years now that there would ultimately be a "flight to quality" as users began to realize how much inaccurate, outdated, incomplete and biased information exists the Web, and that this shift would primarily benefit those established publishers with a reputation for providing quality data. These data suggest that this important and very positive shift is already underway.

Detailed data from this survey can be found at: www.digitalcenter.org