That said I do think that going after markets abandoned by the big guys is an excellent way to go. Usually they abandon it because its not a billion dollar business and isn't worth their time.

I believe now that you need to start attacking their market-share before they close the product down and use the closure as a marketing opportunity.

Now is too late. The right time to have started building it was 2-6 months ago. Now is the time to market an existing solution.

Citing the great gretzky quote, the "puck" is already here.

With backstitch (http://backstit.ch) we get questioned a lot why Google is no longer supporting these types of services (and if this means there is no opportunity there since they aren't worried about it anymore). We honestly feel like there is a lot of surface left uncovered when it comes to personalized/streamlined content and it just doesn't seem to be part of Google's refocusing (this has been seen with the shutting down of a lot of their lab projects as well).

In my industry merchant accounts are very difficult to come by. We are considered high risk. Even with a year of processing records showing 1 chargeback out of >3k transactions I can't get access to a merchant with decent rates(currently paying 3.7%). All the big players turn us away. There's gold to be mined off the beaten path.