Interesting observation on European business, from Google.

Google says European businesses don’t get net >> .:thebusinessonline.com:.

Speaking at the first of a series of “The Business Talks” lectures, organised by The Business, Nikesh Arora, Google’s vice-president of European operations, said corporations in Europe risked losing revenues through failing to understand how the internet is changing the way goods and services are sold.

“Many businesses make the mistake of thinking their website should be a corporate brochure rather than a place to sell their products,” said Arora.

Followed up by some useful statistics.

According to Arora, 10 years ago there were 16m people online, while
today there are 1bn, which still only represents 15% of the world’s
population. He added that over 80% of Ford customers had researched
online and that e-mail is the primary way to communicate with family
and friends for 17% of Europeans.

He added that the internet was
becoming a leading entertainment medium. In the first 12 weeks of 2004,
he said, 6.1m CD singles were sold in shops, compared with 227,000
downloads. But in the first 12 weeks of 2006, 3m CDs were sold against
a staggering 10.5m downloads.