Remember IndustryNet or VerticalNet (how they started out) who were going to let you buy and sell stuff on the internet. VerticalNet was a collection of trade papers on the internet.

Is this a similar idea that Google, Ebay and Yahoo are waking up to?

The difference is, the actual content on IndustryNet or VerticalNet was still captive – I am thinking more of a Google for B2B – mining the internet for business data, putting structure and content around it so that business needing to connect, do analysis and search use the internet to do so. The content would be built up by communities – the search would provide the value.