iBegin Takes On Local Search (in Toronto)
June 16, 2006 by Mark Evans
Filed under Business
Despite the dominance of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft in the search market, local search is still pretty fertile ground. A company working to crack this nut in Toronto is iBegin, which has created a new search engine to make it much easier to find local restaurants, bar, attractions, stores, events, etc. It includes listings and user-generated reviews. There is also a cool “Explorer” that lets you discover things in your neighbourhood by punching your address into a search box. There is also a tool to check traffic conditions (including static video) on some of the major highways. I’m not sure about iBegin’s business model as there doesn’t seem be any revenue-generating engines such as advertising. Other players in the local Toronto search market include Redtoronto.com and Toronto.com.
Mark, the interview here explains the revenue model that they have in mind — “We will eventually incorporate ads. But in no overbearing manner.”
iBegin has a lot of neat features, and it’ll be interesting to see how the community evolves around it to help it grow.
Thanks for the mention :)
We will be releasing an updated design in a few weeks which will be incorporating ads.