Which businesses will the Internet kill next?

Blockbuster, Borders, Circuit City, the Tribune, Musicland – all killed by the Internet.  Will Barnes & Noble, YellowPages, Comcast, and radio stations be next?

The Internet offers global reach and low-cost distribution.  It is a winner-take-all environment without the traditional barriers to entry.

Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Verizon are becoming the dominant players in the Internet age, and destroying many traditional businesses along the way.

What other long-established companies will next fall victim to competition from the Internet?

It isn’t a good time to be a bookseller selling books in big, expensive retail spaces, especially not against Amazon and the rise of the Kindle and downloadable books.  Borders failed.  Barnes & Noble is hanging tough, due in part to the success of their color e-reader, the Nook.  But Amazon’s new Kindle Fire threatens to make the Nook obsolete.  What will keep Barnes & Noble from the downward spiral now?

Comcast/Xfinity is a dominant company with steadily growing revenues.  But will they be able to keep their price structure intact in the face of Verizon’s Fios service, and more television shows being delivered and viewed through the Internet?  Will the day come that HBO doesn’t need Comcast to deliver its shows, since enough people will have fast Internet connections and Internet-enabled TVs to be able to watch high quality TV over their Internet connections, obsoleting Comcast cable.  Comcast’s huge investment in infrastructure leaves it with a $40 billion pile of debt.  It can’t afford to lose customers or reduce its pricing.

We’ve heard for a while that the YellowPages is on its way out, as people no longer use the books to locate businesses.  What about Radio?  Will advertisers continue to pay for radio spots if radio’s listeners have migrated to Pandora, Spotify or are to listening to iTunes through the Bluetooth enables speakers in their cars?

Sprint and BlackBerry are vulnerable to the rise of smartphones and next generation wireless.  Sprint, with its smaller customer base, may have a hard time keeping up with the nationwide rollout of new infrastructure that Verizon and AT&T can better afford.  BlackBerry (RIM) has strong cash-flow from business users, but those business users are migrating over to iPhone and Droid phones as these are adding the features and security that business users need.

Could we one day read about the bankruptcy of one of these formidable businesses?

What other businesses do you think are vulnerable to the rise of the Internet?