Bill Gross has more than 50 disruptive Internet companies under his belt. Now he's looking for moneymaking opportunities in the physical world.
Some people can't stop thinking about food. Bill Gross can't stop thinking about new businesses. One of the world's great serial entrepreneurs, he's launched more than 50 startups through Idealab, his incubator in Pasadena, Calif. His track record includes both winners (CitySearch, Cooking.com, NetZero/United Online) and losers (eToys, Eve.com, Free-PC). But he's best known for inventing the pay-per-click advertising model behind Overture Services (formerly GoTo.com), the pioneering search engine he sold to Yahoo! in 2003 for $1.6 billion.
Now, after more than a decade of launching dotcoms, Gross has rediscovered the pleasures and profitability of the physical world. Idealab's current lineup is crowded with companies that make actual products: robots, 3-D printers, electric cars, rooftop solar collectors. As Gross puts it, he's much more interested today in "atoms businesses" than "bits businesses."
Become the basis for paid search
Paid search has had an impact for Google (Charts, Fortune 500) and Yahoo (Charts, Fortune 500). But it's had an impact as well on many small publishers. Just as eBay (Charts, Fortune 500) empowers people to make a business online, so many publishers use AdSense and the price-per-click model to earn money online.
About bringing search into the next phase
Cost-per-click judges how many visitors you get, but it doesn't measure how effective those visitors are. Do they actually complete a transaction at the end? Do they become a customer of your Web site? We started Snap with the explicit purpose of introducing cost-per-action into search. An action could be anything the Web site cares about: a visitor signing up for a subscription or buying a book or deciding to become one of your customers. Since we introduced Snap, other search engines are starting to blend measurable actions into their final results.
Some people can't stop thinking about food. Bill Gross can't stop thinking about new businesses. One of the world's great serial entrepreneurs, he's launched more than 50 startups through Idealab, his incubator in Pasadena, Calif. His track record includes both winners (CitySearch, Cooking.com, NetZero/United Online) and losers (eToys, Eve.com, Free-PC). But he's best known for inventing the pay-per-click advertising model behind Overture Services (formerly GoTo.com), the pioneering search engine he sold to Yahoo! in 2003 for $1.6 billion.
Now, after more than a decade of launching dotcoms, Gross has rediscovered the pleasures and profitability of the physical world. Idealab's current lineup is crowded with companies that make actual products: robots, 3-D printers, electric cars, rooftop solar collectors. As Gross puts it, he's much more interested today in "atoms businesses" than "bits businesses."
Become the basis for paid search
Paid search has had an impact for Google (Charts, Fortune 500) and Yahoo (Charts, Fortune 500). But it's had an impact as well on many small publishers. Just as eBay (Charts, Fortune 500) empowers people to make a business online, so many publishers use AdSense and the price-per-click model to earn money online.
About bringing search into the next phase
Cost-per-click judges how many visitors you get, but it doesn't measure how effective those visitors are. Do they actually complete a transaction at the end? Do they become a customer of your Web site? We started Snap with the explicit purpose of introducing cost-per-action into search. An action could be anything the Web site cares about: a visitor signing up for a subscription or buying a book or deciding to become one of your customers. Since we introduced Snap, other search engines are starting to blend measurable actions into their final results.
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