A $1 billion idea...that I know I'm not ready for

If you are giving them the inventory management software for free, that is a huge hook for cash strapped small businesses. And once your 'trojan horse' is installed, it's a lot easier to convince a small business owner to 'activate' the product sharing feature to gain an edge over other nearby businesses.

And then as you said, once one business does it, the others follow so that they don't become disadvantaged.

It would seem to me that the key to success is ensuring that your inventory management software is highly intuitive and easy to use for the time-poor business owners.

I think you're missing a key distinction here:

- there are many items people buy on price and are willing to order online. Such items will gradually become unavailable in stores whether or not this idea is ever implemented.

- there are also many items that people want immediately, and are not well suited for online ordering. This convenience makes them well suited to these local search capabilities, and this characteristic may overcome a good part of the resistance to share data.

This distinction is crucial. It may not overcome the psychological resistance you mention, but it isn't obvious how serious that is or whether it can be overcome by system design. For example, you point out a key feature of this system which is the need for limited query capabilities and no downloading (cue debate on how possible that is).

But you miss the real problem with the idea. System integration difficulties will prevent the system from achieving critical mass and broad coverage. It will be unreasonably painful for stores to join the system for extremely mundane reasons like file formats and the difficulty of mapping proprietary taxonomies. Offline retailers just won't have data as ready to integrate as online.

Not impossible, but the sort of unrecognized under appreciated real challenge of the system.

Everybody in this business thinks of doing it, you definitely not the first one. (edit: everybody == strategists)

1) If you can make a really good software in this space, you can make millions just selling it.

2) If you really want to try this, you should get a deep pocketed friend who will buy a company which already has the software, so you can focus on getting the service running asap, not after 5 years.

3) Retailers are not naive about their data and store experience. And there are countless variables that you will need to accommodate. Even if you have a service in place, it may never fly in the volume that you are hoping for.

4) If it doesn't reach the volume you are hoping for, you will not make more money than you would have made by selling them the software. Perhaps you should have tried another strategy, that is more directly related to the data you were hoping to get your hands on.

If you think a little, this is "OpenTable for shopping."

Apparently, all the restaurants hate opentable, but they feel compelled to use it, because their competitors do.

Your comment points to the solution: that of increasing retailer specialization, and the need for local stores to focus on items that are not easily purchased through mail order.

The corner grocery in an urban neighborhood doesn't compete on price with the supermarket 10 blocks away. It competes on convenience.

I'm not saying the idea works, but there is more to it than just mapping all existing old school retail establishments into a search engine.