The big conundrum of web 2.0- Financial domain

With the second wave of dotcoms, or more precisely, the first wave survivors and the second wave, already having 'arrived', there is one big hole in the Indian space. For a really good, content driven financial website. Sure, we have the pink papers and their websites, but those fall short, as do the websites of almost all print publishers in the country.

Sadly, it has allowed a website like moneycontrol.com from the TV 18 group to have a virtual monopoly, despite practices that would put off any serious surfer anywhere. Mind you, they have done quite a few things which clearly marks them out as formidable players, but the fact is, lack of worthwhile competition has also made them take users for granted, with pretty frustrating results lately.

Thus, if you want to see the latest results, those will be linked to indiaearnings.com, another group website, which in turn requires you to be registered at poweryourtrade.com, their tipping and trading website. The disease is spreading, as sites like ICICIdirect.com, which were never comprehensive in any case, have also put a brake on going beyond the headlines, unless you are a subscriber to their services.

Leaving the job of getting information really difficult for anyone interested in financial issues, who is not quite an active investor.

Pure play competitors like myiris.com seem to have given up some time back, though I feel they are just a single round of funding away from a smart turnaround, given the market dynamics right now. Myiris for instance, badly needs to add bandwidth and servers for their traffic, redesign a little to show some semblance of freshness, and they could be looking at serious monies in pretty good time. Which leaves me wondering, why haven't they moved yet?

And worse, leaves me wondering, how long before we have a serious, quality option to moneycontrol?