The e-success story of the year 2005 has undoubtedly been Google. Why may you ask?

Look at the stock value - Google Inc. is a better value at more than $400 a share than when the company went public last year at $85. It has a stock market value of nearly $130 billion, almost neck-and-neck with IBM and behind only Microsoft and Intel in the technology industry.

Founders of Google named Men of the Year - Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who were named as Men of the Year by the Financial Times, promise to "make the world a better place".

They are only 32! - And that is the BIG news. It is one thing to succeed in your prime and another to do it at 32. Their business has no way hit the ceiling. While Google is embracing one and all, the surfers, the web site owners, the individual and corporate advertisers, the business model is inherently strong.

It is GLOBAL with MULTIPLE REVENUE STREAMS. Internet is about numbers and nobody has got it more right than Google.

Closer to home there are no success stories worth writing about. Why may you ask?

Lack of good local content - Most local surfers frequent international destination sites.

No numbers - One state of US or China for that matter, has more internet subscribers than 16 Middle East countries put together

E-commerce - A big let down, The majority of regional portals do not even have an online payment gateway that accepts credit cards.

Yet 2006 promises to be bright. Why may you ask?

In one phrase - Cause from here you can only go up. The silver lining is:

The forecast for rate of growth of internet subscribers is high
Costs for internet access are crashing
Hotspots are going to be everywhere
E-Governments are embracing the web big time
Soon it will be mandatory to log on to get on with life. Why may you ask?

Stay tuned!

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