ISPs Launch Attack Ads
from the market-growth-is-over dept
A general rule of thumb for a growing technology company is to focus on “growing the market” rather than stealing market share from competitors. The idea is that the technology is new, and there are still plenty of people who don’t know about it, and you’re going to get more value out of expanding the overall market then getting into a slugfest with your competitors over the customers they already have. Well, apparently the ISP and portal market think their days of growth are well past them, because the new trend is to attack each other and try to steal away as many customers as possible. It’s not all that surprising that this is happening now, but it will be more interesting to see how it plays out. When you start competing directly, you need to offer something that the other guys don’t – and that usually means something that your users actually want. That means that portals like Yahoo! might finally have to admit that pissing off their users with overly intrusive advertising is actually hurting them more than helping them.
