The New Nation - Internet Edition

Maswood Alam Khan

Many years back on the outskirts of Calcutta city an owner of a small shop of 'lep', 'toshak' and 'balish' (quilt, mattress and pillow) had his tough time selling his products as not many customers used to stop by his shop. Frustrated with a bleak prospect of business he almost decided to switch to a different career. But before closing his shop he tried a novelty approach to attract customers: he simply turned the signboard of his shop with its upside down making it difficult for a passerby to read his signpost. As many people feeling vexed at the weird way of displaying the signboard entered his shop to ask for an explanation, the shop-owner would respond: "You would not have crossed the threshold of my shop if the signpost was as usual. Please take a tea." His business on bedding ultimately roared vigorously and the signboard was later reaffixed uprightly.

Attracting attention of prospective customers in this frantic age of hysterical busyness is a tough job---no more as simple as reversing the signpost of a shop. People don't have time even to enjoy a smooth and deep breathing. Every single person is chasing after money and work and success for survival; one who hobbles has to give up the chase and is careened away onto the sideline. In our chase we cannot afford time to look at a signpost of a shop or an advertisement on a billboard unless we---on our way to work or on our way to entertainment or on our way to a search for what we desperately need---have but to penetrate through the face of a screen embellished with an advertisement. That screen is the newest gold mine business tycoons are nowadays rushing to conquer. The latest tycoon who on last Friday had his eye on such a screen is Mr. Bill Gates, the owner of Microsoft Corp.

Microsoft Corp has made an unsolicited offer to buy Yahoo Inc for $44.6 billion in cash and stock in what would be the biggest Internet deal since the Time Warner-AOL merger. Microsoft said on Friday it offered $31 per share for Yahoo, or a 62 percent premium over Yahoo's closing stock price in NASDAQ on Thursday. Yahoo Inc, whose shares jumped to $30.75 in pre-market trading, said it would evaluate the bid.

When a brewing recession as the sword of Damocles is now hanging on the capital markets all over the world, when US employers are cutting payrolls and when investors have not yet forgotten the tragic $182 billion purchase in 2001 of Time Warner Inc by AOL (America Online)---the worst merger in recent corporate history---what, everybody is now wondering, has actually propelled Microsoft to join forces with Yahoo being full aware of the fact that these two companies have different corporate cultures and many overlapping businesses---the very same reason that made promised synergies out of marriage between Time Warner and AOL never materialize due to their clashing corporate cultures? One however who is aware of the business potential of online advertisements only knows the secret: Himalayan amount of money that can be minted in a matter of time if a giant called "Google" can be killed or injured.

The online advertising market is growing rapidly and expected to reach nearly $80 billion by 2010 from over $40 billion in 2007. "Microsoft, the world's largest software company, together with Yahoo can offer an exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market, which is now dominated by Google", the software company hopes.

There was a time not in the distant past when like door chimes jingling in the breeze advertisement rhymes broadcast by radios or telecast by televisions used to ring in our ears and sing in our minds like music. Children preferred singing those ad rhymes on toiletries to reciting poems from texts in their libraries.

With advertisements in prints and electronic media galore at every crossroads of our life ad rhymes have gradually lost their appeal to our ears and eyes. A break in a TV program for airing an advertisement is now deemed a slap on our face. We mute sound the moment an advertisement starts over radio or television; we ask for downloading TV dramas pruning those footages of advertisements for our viewing at a later time to free ourselves from the onslaught of advertisements. Unsolicited and pervasive commercial advertisements through radios, televisions, billboards etc. are constantly reinforcing a phony link between consumption and happiness, invading our mental spaces, blunting our ability to determine the truthfulness of those ad messages and squandering our resources, which could otherwise be utilized for our fundamental, societal and long-term needs.

But economic growth cannot be imagined without advertising. There are companies who spend half of their working capital on advertisements alone that help sell their products at exponential growth rate. Non-commercial entities also have to rely on advertisement for their organizational growth. Commerce or public welfare without advertisement is a highway without directional signposts. US$385 billion was spent for worldwide advertising in 2006 as was reported by the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. The accounting firm's report projected worldwide advertisement spending to exceed half a trillion dollar by 2010. Continuous research by advertising agencies on how creative advertisements can leave lasting impression in viewers' and readers' minds has developed advertising business to its present potential as the instrumental force behind marketing.

Advertisements through newspaper, billboard, radio and television have proved that messages in the forms of subliminal advertising once reach the readers' and viewers' minds work magically to enhance sale. The only block that stands between the consumers' minds and the advertisers' messages is restrained scope and constrained time. Now that people are increasingly getting dependent on computer for work and home and internet provides the easiest window for inflow and outflow of information communication through websites have opened new frontiers for advertisers to make their messages reach the viewers.

The website the computer users draw on most while browsing through their internet explorers to hunt information on anything from any corner of the world is primarily a "search engine" called Google. Just type the Internet address www.google.com in the Address bar, click the Go button, wait for a while and then type a word or words in the Search Bar---a world of links with short descriptions are ready for your service. Information are now just a few clicks away!

Google is not the only website to provide you the service to garner information. There are hundreds and thousands of websites who are always at your service completely free of cost. Those websites only want you to enter the world of information riding their own search engines because that is the time advertisers, who are their business partners, will shower their messages before your eyes. As a search engine Google is number one enjoying 77 percent of worldwide web search market share, while Yahoo is the second with only 16 percent and Microsoft a distant third with a mere 3.7 percent.

Names like Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail are very common to any internet user thanks to free email services being provided by Microsoft.com, Yahoo.com and Google.com respectively to millions of people many whom don't have computers of their own. Such web-based email services have made post boxes of snail mails redundant and internet users obsessed with the service---the way serving tea for free to people in the last century have made later generations addicted to tea.

Anyone having such web-based email addresses can send and receive tomes of news, letters, messages, pictures, voices, music, movies and what not through any computer with internet access from anywhere in the world. In addition to email services these three stake holders provide many other services like delivery of news, music and financial services---all free of cost. Yahoo alone attracts more than 500 million people monthly to a range of media sites including Yahoo Mail, the world's biggest e-mail service for consumers. Though young in age Gmail, the email wing of Google, is now gaining tremendous popularity for their offering ever-increasing free space to each subscriber.

Gurus of commerce know it well that humans will for ever chase after money and work and success and they need information which is now as valuable as oxygen for their nourishment and survival as long as they will remain on the chasing track. There is no alternative to internet and no alternative to a search engine like that of Google or Yahoo that can ensure a smooth supply of information for generations.

Before a new invention that may enable a human to transport his own body instantly to any corner of the world through matter transfusion---as we view in Star Trek movie series---we have but to rely on Google or Yahoo for the time being to provide us a Time Machine that can haul us to Library of Congress to read a rare book there or to the Planet Mars to observe her topography. What else could sound to Mr. Bill Gates a better business proposition than the job of transporting our sensory entity on a virtual search engine through World Wide Web?