[silverlake]

It looks like Khan Academy for college-level, semester long classes. He should target the University of Phoenix's crappy online program. Their parent company, the Apollo Group, has a market cap of $7B. Thrun could easily take a huge bite out of that.

[etrain]

While I agree that a new education startup could go after something like the University of Phoenix, I'm not sure that Thrun and his crew are going for that.

To me, the University of Phoenix represents a credential factory. People see that all the jobs they want require a college degree, and so they go the easiest route to get that. I don't believe that University of Phoenix (or most of the other big for-profit names) have a strong interest in educating people, nor do I think that their customers are really interested in getting an education - instead they're interested in getting a piece of paper that says they're qualified to do the job they want.

Thrun seems to have far more noble, though possibly less profitable, goals in mind.

[jeffreymcmanus]

Not with one class and no accreditation, he won't. UOP is the largest private educator in the US with more than 400,000 paid students. Setting aside the fact that a single online class is nothing close to a "University", he's got a long way to go before he can make a dent in the #1 company in the industry.