Intuit recently authored a report on the state of US businesses in 2017 - Future of Small Business Report - in which they suggest that by 2017, the number of unique businesses will triple. SmallBusinessHub pointed me to this article (via Reddit) and noted some very interesting takeaways:

The main theme of the report was that we are in the midst of an economic revolution that started in the 1980's when 80% of American workers were at companies with greater than 1000 employees to today where 40% of American workers are at companies with greater than 1000 employees to some percentage far less than that 10 years from now.

Another major contributor to the decentralization of business is that small/new businesses no longer need to rely on huge sales organizations to "find" customers. Search engines make every niche market more "efficient" enabling smaller businesses to be "found" by the right customers who are shopping in a newly efficient niche. I believe search engine optimization further lowers the transaction costs between companies making the decision to outsource versus hire more attractive and making the barrier to starting a business lower which should lead to a further decentralization of business.

If you believe in their microeconomic theories about the marketplace shift, you've got to be pretty happy that you've chosen to be involved in the world of Internet marketing on any level. The very fact that you're reading SEOmoz right now points to signs that you'll benefit, financially and in life-quality from business you undertake online. In keeping with this theme, I'd like to carry out these expectations to a logical conclusion:

1. The web will become massively more populated
   The numbers of search queries, websites, and business transactions conducted online will continue to skyrocket to unprecedented levels. We'll almost certainly see another large spike in adoption of the web, similar to the dot-com boom - the growth we're seeing now is large, but it's gradual. I believe that in a few years, there will be massive acceleration in that growth.
2. Competition will increase dramatically
   If you think it's tough right now to rank for orange county mortgage, just wait until 2017. Both the number of businesses and the number of consumers with demand will ensure that the value of ranking well in the search engines (or whatever new method of retrieval on demand evolves over time).
3. Opportunity is here now
   If you're considering leaving your job to pursue web work fulltime, start your own business or leverage the web for your existing company, the trends suggest now would be a good time to make that decision. Granted, you'll often have to give up some income and possibly a lot of security, but the rewards on a macro-level should be tremendous, and for those who prove themselves to earn a higher than average return, financial freedom awaits.
4. If History is any measure, several sectors will boom
   Domain names, web services, transaction systems and online marketing would appear to all be large winners in the online economy's continued growth.

If this seems like knowledge you already have and didn't need to read about, just consider that if the data pointed another direction - that trending was flowing back to the large organizations - the above statements would be reversed almost entirely. This is one of those posts to help re-assure you about the value of online content, and, hopefully, light a fire inside to help you realize the value of getting into this game as quickly as possible.