It wasn’t so long ago that Encyclopedia Britannica was the definitive source for information. Then came along the computer and Microsoft’s Encarta DVD version of the world. It had a big impact on Britannica’s business model and shrank the market considerably (I mean who would pay hundreds of pounds for the books when they could get a DVD for less than £30).

Then came Wikipedia. Wikipedia offered a free service with content written by the public and this caused major disruption again.

I dont have the detailed statistics but Wikipedia currently gets around 450 times the traffic as Encyclopedia Britannica.

So you would think that would be the end of it. I mean how can you compete with free?

Over the weekend Google announced GPedia. Their version of the Wikipedia, but this time they will pay contributors based on the advertising revenue generated on the pages holding their content. So again, Google tips the market dynamics on its head.

It will be interesting to see where this goes - and whether GPedia becomes as popular as Wikipedia, but when you own the search engine of choice and you can change the algorithms which point people to relevant sites it does make an interesting proposition.

What do you think of this proposal?

Dean

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