Our Stance
We'll state right off the bat that we're strongly against it. Many ISPs, Web Developers, Online News Content providers, and other internet industry businesses are probably going to be against it. We would hope so. It puts the state into a position of competing, with tax dollars, with every web and internet service provider and entrepreneur currently existing in the state, that are out there actually trying to build this industry in Pennsylvania. Because the state couldn't possibly do all these things by themselves, they will contract out and could greatly influence the determination of the winners in a variety of internet service segments in this state... if it would work like Governor Ridge suggests it would.
We're here to suggest it won't work that way.
As far as portal ideas are concerned, this idea is to create a mini-Yahoo, with state specific features. Of course, there are already businesses already trying something like this... www.pennsylvania.com, www.paseek.com, etc.. And Yahoo, Thunderstone, Excite, etc., already offer ways to create your own state specific content through the search process. Concerning business web pages, a business can create their own web site through Geocities with Yahoo in a day. That doesn't make it any better.
When portals stop growing with content and features, they succumb to other portals that offer more. Do we honestly think that Yahoo or AOL or Excite would shy away from competing with a state site dealing with commercial enterprise if there's actually a there there?
And if Yahoo or AOL did compete, how could the state raise the kind of money required to compete? Portal Businesses can buy and sell pieces of their core. They sell stock. They borrow. And if the future of Net Conglomeration happens as is projected, they will usually end up selling the whole thing.
For the state, it sounds like taxes, or fees, for financing competition. And for what? Duplication of existing effort... and unlikely gain.
Has anybody even done any market research to determine if a Pennsylvania-only portal would support its weight? Any company thinking of doing this would have to deliver the reasons to venture capitalists in order to get the money to proceed. The State's Taxpayers are the venture capitalists in this matter, and we deserve the market research AND the business plan before any effort is expended in this fashion.
One last word about search engines: The good ones have an incredibly strong market research value, because they measure volume of searches, and trends, in a multitude of ways. For an example of something interesting along those lines, check out 50.lycos.com . The usage analysis, the trend information - the information marketplace user data - is a large part of future value of these search engines. If the state were to succeed in this venture... is this the kind of information we want the state having - and selling? What else are they going to do with this information?
The State Government creates quite a bit of their own content. The role of state government on the Internet should be to provide that content, and tools to manage that content, in valuable ways for the Commonwealth's citizens. It should be to facilitate use of the Internet in government entities it provides funding to so that processes can be streamlined and efficiencies developed. It should be focused on making government more effective and responsive to the citizens.
And it should allow for a fair and equitable field of play for commercial operations to compete... and then get out of the way.
By proposing this project, the Governor has essentially made the point that the State should be the leader in determining the use of the Internet for commercial enterprises. This would suggest that there is a great amount of Internet savvy available within the state's agencies - and vision. There is no doubt that there is some, however, the vast majority of talent and skill and vision and determination exists in the entrepreneurial private marketplace that is today building Pennsylvania's internet communities.
The future will be rife with legal issues and tangles as the information and technology industries become even more and more prominent in everyone's daily lives. We will need our state government to be an arbiter in these issues and controversies - not an active competitor with position to be gained or lost based on legal outcome.
We hope that Governor Ridge will remove this proposal from his budget. The issues involved in state government investing itself (and the taxpayers) into commercial enterprise on the Internet deserve considerably more attention than can be given in the budget. The common wisdom is that this state budget will be passed by mid-May. There is no way, in the context of reviewing all the financial details involved in the budget, for the Legislature, the Public, and the Internet Industry, to reasonably discuss the ramifications, possibilities, and expected results of the PowerPort proposal, given that time period.
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