Umair Haque / Bubblegeneration

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Google Health as Edge Strategy

A few days ago, KH asked what the deal was with Google Health.

Let me try and shed some light on it for a sec - it's important to observe because I think it will be a textbook example of using edge competencies to reconstruct a deeply inefficient market.

With that in mind, why Google Health?

1) Large market size.

2) A market with low competitive intensity.

3) A market with enormous density and value of information (viz, just waiting for some Google-fu).

4) A market ripe for business model and value chain disruption and reinvention through hyperefficient interaction. Many of the most valuable keywords on AdWords are health related; it's not surprising that Goog smells the potential to leverage it's edge competencies into an already valuable domain.

Here, the game won't be about simple ads. Rather, high keyword prices point to enormous search costs for both parties in healthcare transactions. Google, then, will benefit more by using, for example, pay-per-lead gen, to make this market hyperefficient, and rebalance market power along the value chain by atomizing it.

-- umair // 2:50 PM // 0 comments

Comments: