Google : The World's Largest Web Hosting Company?

Almost everyone has internet access these days. Probably well over 50% of households in the entire Western world are now plugged into the web.

But when it comes to having your own website, that's still a rarity. Probably less than one percent of people have their own website at this time.

This is about to change. It's likely that within five to ten years, most people with internet access will also have a website. The majority of these websites will be very small and brief, but people will have them, just as they now have their names listed in telephone directories.

This is because setting up a website (or blog) has become as simple as typing an email. And it's free. Google's free service, Blogger, now hosts several million blogs owned by well over one million blogger early adopters. Given the growth rates of the blogging phenomenon, the potential is certainly there for this to grow to several hundred million blogs over the next five to ten years.

And this is why I believe Google is quietly building their plan for a second giant revenue source (after online advertising) to come from the web hosting business.

There are rumors swirling around the net now that Google and Microsoft are in competition to acquire AOL. AOL has 27 million subscribers. Their subscribers are the least sophisticated internet users (representing the technologically challenged majority of people). Based on Google's recent RFP's, experts are predicting that Google wants to build a private internet network, maybe an entertainment behemoth like AOL and Time Warner first envisioned. But this doesn't sound like Google to me. Google isn't going to be entering the talent business of media and entertainment.

If Google does begin providing added-on services to the basic Blogger service, packages for domain names and web hosting, starting at $5 bucks a month, and enhanced services for more fees for people who want more, this could grow into a multi-billion dollar business very quickly. Do the math. If every tenth person decides they need their own website in the next five to ten years, this division of Google could soon be rivaling their advertising behemoth in revenue generation.

The web hosting business is a low margin, low-tech, customer support nightmare and a generally unsexy business. But it's also the future of online real estate. And with Google's clout, it could develop into something much bigger with add-on services we can't even imagine today.

That - with the middleman distribution system cut out and dangling - is the future of entertainment and media networks.




See also, The Future for Google's Blogger?


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