The last time there was a serious recession, the internet was still a private research project. Today, it offers Ireland a real chance to pull itself out of the slump, argues DAMIAN LAWLOR

FROM STAR performer to sick man of Europe: a lot has been said and written about Ireland Inc’s fall from grace and what we need to do to extract ourselves from the situation.

So much so that we have ended up with some conflicting messages about what direction we should take. One thing seems certain though: business, particularly small and medium businesses, will be the engine for recovery.

If we can create a climate in which existing businesses can survive and new ones grow and flourish, it will go a long way to getting the country back on track.

When crisis hits, it is natural to look back at previous slumps and draw lessons from the experience.

However we also need to look at today’s world, see how it has changed and, where possible, use those changes to our advantage.

It is often noted how the world has become smaller through low-cost travel, the awakening of the dormant economies of China and India and the evolution of global media. Arguably though the biggest agent of change has been the advent of modern, global telecommunications networks that support the internet.

From its small beginnings in the 1980s, the internet has grown to become a critical part of our lives.

The numbers are mind-boggling: two billion searches a day; 100 billion non-spam e-mails and instant messages a day; 200 million active users of Facebook; and 120,000 new blogs created every day.

The internet, of course, is not just a communications medium, it is also a platform for doing business. In recent years, hundreds of thousands of new and existing companies have begun to use the web as a means of finding new markets and securing new revenue streams, with the result that €130 billion was spent on e-commerce in Europe in 2007.

One of the benefits of doing business on the web is that you do not need to be physically close to your customers or markets. It does not matter where you are, so long as you have an internet connection.

For Ireland, this is great news. Being a small island on the periphery of Europe used to be an issue but in today’s connected world, it matters much less. Innovation and entrepreneurship are more important – and being English-speaking is a big plus because English is a major force on the web.

Not only does the internet open doors to far-flung markets, but it does so at scale. Scale is something businesses often underestimate. Scale drives business and the ability to drive and grow domestically and internationally is key.

Two examples of this are Huntoffice.ie and Hostelworld.com.

Huntoffice.ie uses Google Ad Words to offer office-supply products to Irish companies – it has recorded growth of more than 20 per cent a month based on finding its target audience in Ireland through carefully selected keywords and advertisement texts.

Internationally, Hostelworld. com identified an opportunity to introduce online bookings for hostels. This Irish firm features more than 20,000 hostels on its site and trades all over the world because its advertisements can be seen by web users in countless countries. That is the power of this medium: you can go global very quickly.

Companies wishing to advertise their products or services can achieve deep and rapid market penetration through search or content advertising. Furthermore, by allowing advertisers to use their website as a platform on which to advertise, any entrepreneur can increase their earnings as their website popularity grows.

Google’s vision of the internet is that it provides instant access to a huge global market. Small, outward-looking, innovative Irish businesses can benefit hugely from the scalability opportunities the web presents. Whether they have a product or service to sell or a website that is generating a lot of traffic, it is possible to identify new customers and help boost sales revenue. In today’s climate, that is a proposition few businesses can afford to ignore.

Damian Lawlor is director of online sales and operations for Google AdSense and YouTube in Europe, the Middle East and Africa