Saturday, March 04, 2006

How long before the GooglePages are delivered to your door?

globeandmail.com : When the fingers switch to clicking: "e"

This is an interesting article regarding YPG, the Canadian Yellow Pages giant. CEO Marc Tellier has achieved near rock-star status guiding the directory company to higher levels of growth and profitability.

One line in the article quotes my friend Jean-Pascal Lion, YPG's vice-president of electronic directories in an exchange with Google's founder about purchasing YPG.

A search engine purchasing a Yellow Pages directory company makes so much sense, that it WILL happen. My only question is WHO and WHEN.

Certainly Google and Yahoo will need local sales forces to crack the lucrative market of small business marketing. But don't count out Barry Diller, either. His company IAC already owns a pseudo-directory company in Entertainment Publications, the company that produces those thick "buy one - get one free" coupon books. He also owns CitySearch and ASK.com.

But who is a candidate on the print side? Nearly everyone. The print directories throw off so much cash, that the purchase nearly pays for itself over a few years.

Yellow Pages companies know how to sell local advertising. Search engines know how to distribute local ads to increasing numbers of consumers.

The purchase now of a directory company could spark a directory company buying war between Google and Yahoo as they vie to dominate the local market with sales people.

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