Verizon is a huge telephone company. It has many assets including billions in value relating to its Yellow Pages directories. Online search and paid search threaten any Yellow Pages franchise. It is obvious that the folks at Verizon feel the threat coming from current search powerhouses as well as the potential "Stanford engineering students" working on a local search solution.

Verizon does not appear to be wasting time in staying ahead of these threats as they are going to launch Superpages.com at our Search Engine Strategies show in New York City next week.

The Verizon launch is aimed at saving a multi-billion dollar franchise. We are going to see more and more information about local search services --- which means more and more investment --- which means that the already hot search market has several enormous years of growth ahead for all concerned.

Numerous other announcements will be made at SES New York next week at the Hilton. SES will be the most exciting trade show to hit New York City since the halcyon days of Internet World.