Don’t Playa Hate on AOL
by Ryan - December 16th, 2005 11:36 am
Don’t hate the playa’ hate the game, is how it goes. But who knew this saying would ever apply to the world of search engines..? Apparantly now it does. AOL has been a very mishchevious entity lately. In the beginning of the week, the Wall Street Journal reported a tentative deal involving MSN and AOL to partner in search. For those of you not familiar with the situation, if you run a search at search.aol.com the results given are actually Google results. Google and AOL have had this sort of partnership for organic search as well as Pay Per Click for some time now.. Since AOL’s massive collapse in relevance to the internet world, much specualtion has come about as to what was going to happen to this once mighty internet presence. Most of it has had something to do with Google, MSN or Yahoo aquiring AOL entirely from Time Warner.. However, AOL has somehow pulled together a newer and stronger sense of self worth recently and nixed the aquisition idea. They are now dangling their 11% search marketshare out there like they’re on 42nd Street, searching for the highest paying suitor that will provide them with the most benefits.
This is where the ‘playa’ factor comes in. AOL has been courted heavily by the big 3 and is playing them all like a highly talented hot chick. The outcome of it all will be very significant.
If say, MSN reaches a deal with AOL, it would instantly gain 11% of the search market share and Google would instantly lose 11% of its current market share. That’s a 22% swing which would put Google and MSN at just about an even level. Same holds true for Yahoo, but it hasn’t come onto the scene as an actual contender yet. Anyway, a deal was supposedly struck between MSN and AOL that would completely re-shape the search world. When i read this, all I could picture was Bill Gates with a huge grin on his face thinking about how he just made MSN search a force to be reckoned with
BUT.. was AOL only playing games with big bad Bill to make Google jealous? Maybe so.. Just today, an even bigger story hit the wire confirming AOL’s true playa status. The new buzz is saying that Google is planning to purchase a 5% share in AOL from Time Warner for the small fee of 1 billion dollars and keep its current search partnership with AOL in tact.. Note the link i just posted is to MSNBC!! Bill and Balmer must be shaking in their little space boots right now.. You go AOL! Play on playa..
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