Sensis holds a virtual monopoly (due to historical positioning) over the production of telephone directories in Australia. In “They’ve lost their Sensis” the Edward Mandla points out that the company has completely failed to innovate and build upon what has to be one of Australia’s most valuable data assets.
I wanted to ask the NSW Liberal Party a question and needed its phone number. I entered “NSW Liberal Party” into Sensis and was given a whole lot of links to articles that were not relevant. I entered the same information into Google and the first link was the NSW Liberal Party website.
Pay for position listings make the Australian Yellow Pages site almost unusable. Search for a G.P. in your area and you’ll be bombarded with breast implants in Sydney. Now that might be fine in some circumstances but I like my breasts the way they are and really I’m looking for someone to give me a flu shot.
Maybe the Australian government should look at splitting the company up. Allow multiple sales organisations to sell ads into a government operated book printing business. In the same way as any telco can provide my phone service, my long distance service, etc. Government should own the infrastructure, private business should be allowed to retail on top of it (don’t get me started on Telstra’s position by inheritance, or selling off power lines). Handing monopolistic government infrastructure over to private business isn’t good for consumers or competing businesses.