Genius of the Indian web – Y!, Gmail,Orkut,icici,Airtel,irctc..

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Web18 announced the “Genius of the Web” award and as expected, there are no major surprises!

GMail emerged as the Best Email Service Provider (Consumer) and Orkut, the Best Social Networking Site. Y! India won the special User’s Choice Award.

Here is the complete list:

• Best Airlines – Jet Airways;
• Best Banking – ICICI Bank;
• Best Brokers – ICICI Direct;
• Best Business ISP – Bharti Airtel;
• Best Consumer ISP Broadband – Bharti Airtel;
• Best Education – ‘Education Times’;
• Best Email Service Provider Business – Indiatimes;
• Best E-Commerce Site (Online Gaming) – Yahoo India;
• Best E-Commerce Site (Matrimonials) – Shaadi.com.
  Best Hotels Site : Taj Hotels
• Best Insurance Site: LIC India
• Best Government and PSU Site : IRCTC India.
• Best Mutual Funds Site : Reliance Mutual
• Best Trade Site: eBay
• Best Utility Site : Rel.co.in. (source)

A few observations:

• Where is MSN India? Doesn’t features in any of the categories! It’s no surprise that MSN India is confused with it’s India strategy and to reinforce that, they have launched MSN Tabloid, a sleazy masala channel!
• IMHO, Jet airways is probably the worst site (the overall ticket buying process is highly non-intuitive and cumbersome)
• Where is the best travel site category? best job site category?E-Commerce is too large a category to fit in travel/matrimony/job sites.
• Sadly, no surprises in these results!

What’s your take? Do you agree with all of the above results?