For years, Sensis was regarded as a
glittering jewel in Telstra's substantial crown.
And it was such a promising jewel that
Telstra's former chief executive Sol Trujillo once dared to compare Sensis to
the global seach giant Google when he uttered two now immortal words:
The financial strength and potential of Telstra's directories business
was constantly in the news, and at the time of the "google schmoogle"
comparison in 2005, Sensis was seen as a key to Telstra's survival before the
final T3 float.
During the years when Telstra was run by Sol Trujillo and his
predecessor Ziggy Switskowski, speculation that Sensis would be sold in a
public float to underpin Telstra's diminishing treasure chest was constant.
The former chief executive of Sensis, Bruce Akhurst, often quipped that
no interview I conducted with him would be complete without me asking the
"Sensis float" question.
While Sol Trujillo's "google schmoogle" quote was described as
arrogant, his faith in the growing Sensis business was underpinned not just by
the White and Yellow Pages but once lucrative search brands such as Whereis and
Citysearch.
In a sign of its confidence, Telstra splashed out $636 million in 2004to buy The Trading Post to get into the lucrative classified advertising
market, outbidding Fairfax Media and Kerry Packer's Publishing and Broadcasting
Limited.
Charles Falkiner, who founded The Trading
Post with his late wife in 1966 for $24,000, sold the business to a Dutch
company for substantially less and described Telstra's 2004 purchase as
"mind-boggling".
Fast forward from 2005 to now, and the Sensis business has been
overshadowed by the lightning fast expansion of online search engines and
dozens of tablet applications where algorithms "do the walking"
rather than the Yellow Pages.
Not long ago, offices - like ABC newsrooms around the country - were
littered with phone books of the white and yellow variety.
Now, phone books are more often than not used to raise the height of
computer monitors but even now that practice is less common as offices
"opt-out" of the delivery of hard copy phone directories.
To put it more brutally, Telstra's $636 million purchase of The Trading Post -
a single business in the Sensis family - vastly outweighs the $454
million Platinum Equity paid for Telstra's 70 percent share in the Sensis
business.
The demise of the Sensis business once again
demonstrates that no company can quarantine itself from rapidly changing
technology and consumer tastes that are now determined by an app on a
smartphone or tablet.
Telstra is most likely glad to be offloading
Sensis for what it sees as a fair price.
But it might well be reflecting on the
award winning "Not Happy, Jan" advertisement that once encapsulated the the value
and vitality of the Sensis offering a decade ago in a different world.