The Web is a driving force. Saylor sees the Web as a transforming force in business, but not in the way many venture capitalists and other investors do now. The Web is nothing more than a distribution channel. The really big money in the geometric metastasis of the Web, he explains, is not in providing or supporting its infrastructure but in using it to deliver proprietary products and services. But Saylor has a refined concept of what makes a vague potential into a profitable business formula.
Answers is a trillion-dollar business.
Much public Web content today is thrown out with little concern for interest, need, or value to the consumer, who so far shows little inclination to pay for it. That business is profitable now for vendors such as MicroStrategy, and for their customers as well, because it focuses on productively applying information to solving practical problems tied to someone's bottom line. Answers form a potent business because answers imply questions, and questions equate a demand. The burgeoning public Web promises to ramp that business up to the terabuck level through huge economies of scale. With 100,000 times more users than the few hundred in a corporate department, companies can afford to spend thousands of times more on data mining development.