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Is AOL The Key to Microsoft 'Killing' Google?
VK writes "When Steve Ballmer yelled at a departing Microsoft employee that he would "kill Google" we had no idea just how direct a method he had in mind. Buying all or part of AOL may be the first part of the master plan, as Google relies heavily on the advertising pages that come from AOL, since it now syndicates its search to Google." Update: 09/23 19:20 GMT by J : As our readers pointed out, the original and Reg reprint both typoed "Yahoo" for AOL. Fixed.
TFA:
...Google relies heavily on the advertising pages that come from Yahoo, since it now syndicates its search to Google.
I think they meant:
Google relies heavily on the advertising pages that come from AOL, since it now syndicates its search to Google.
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A merging of AOL with MSN will surely not "kill" Google. Yes, as the article states, Google earns roughly 25% of its profit from advertising on AOL but another article (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/15/aol_msn/) also states what's most important: "AOL - which has seen net users leave the service in their millions over recent years..." Yes, AOL is constantly losing customers and will likely continue to do so. While this move might put a dent in Google's current profit, it's certainly nothing as serious as made to seem.
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any exactly how many advertising dollars do you have to spend annually. There are a lot of folks who do give AOL/Time Warner their adverising dollars. Why?
YOU may not like AOL, but my father in law loves it. He's stayed at my house. I had him hooked up to my home LAN where he coul duse the cable modem to get out on his laptop, want to know what he did? Connected to AOL. Why? Because he's an idiot or uneducated? No. Its because AOL works for him. Its easy for him to find what he need on AOL. Yes, there are search engines on the internet at large, but what is the S/N ratio? Its a lot lower than on AOL, and there are a lot of folks who like that. THe under 25 set may not get that, and some of us in the over 25 set may think its a bit strange too, but that is because we are geeks. Ask mom and dad, or grandma what they think of AOL and they probably have the same issues we all have with out ISP, but in general they like it. This is also mindshare, not among the same set as Google, but AOL has a large userbase and they reach a lot of eyes, and probably will for a long time. Their market will decrease, but I don't see them going away any time soon. They serve a market, not a niche, a market, and they will continue to
You might be surprised, but even RTFA doesn't help this time around, as /. just copy and pasted the blurb from the register.
But you are right, it doesn't make sense at all of course. I think one can assume that they wanted to talk about google advertising on aol, not on yahoo.
God I can't wait till Bush gets the arse, then you can get a DOJ with some teeth and you can chase Microsoft with pitchforks again :P
LOL! You think Bush is the reason the DOJ case was dropped? You don't get it. Microsoft wasn't sending enough money to Washington in the form of lobbyists. Eventually, the politicians noticed that oversight and decided it was time to put the squeeze on Microsoft so that Microsoft would get with the program and share some of its money with the politicians. That is all the DOJ case was about.
Microsoft isn't entirely stupid. They learner their lesson. They now have legions of lobby-droids roaming the halls of Capital Hill. They give away hundreds of millions of dollars a year in campaign contributions, free trips to exotic places, anything you can think of. So, now that they are playing by the unwritten rules, there's no more reason for the mob (that is, politicians) to shake them down. Why would a senator or a congressperson or a president want to break up microsoft?? That would put all those millions of freebees in jeopardy. No way! Leave Microsoft alone and keep the money comming (under the table).
It doesn't matter if we have a democrat or a republican president. Bill Gates could stand out on the front lawn of the Redmond campus and chuck babies into a giant woodchipper. The government wont touch him now, because now he's playing by the rules - he's paying his protection money.
Having used both B&D and DeWalt tools I can say that the difference is more than just the casing and color - DeWalt tools are built MUCH better than the cheaper B&D couterpart. If you're a only using the tools a few hours a year its not a big deal, all day long its a huge difference. The main reason Black and Decker tools are not used by professionals is because in the long run, its less expensive to have a quality tool that lasts and performs well.
It's actually intended more to prevent monopolistic "abuses" and encourage fair play. You can have a monopoly.... just as long as you're not using that power to prevent people from entering the market. Think Netscape v. IE. IE was REQUIRED to be installed by M$oft. Eventually they even made it a "part" of the OS. Effectively FORCING people to use IE. Now, you could use Netscape, but the barrier of entry for Netscape to be used was outrageous because there already was a web browser on the system, so no one installed it.
The bottom line: The law is to prevent abuses, not bar people from making a monopoly.
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According to today's NYT, Time Warner says that AOL is their future. So the MS buying AOL scenario seems less likely. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/22/business/media/2 2warner.html
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It's high time we as a world society start pushing for a code of ethics for business officers. The FTC got all huffy about "accounting practices" after a few CEOs lied to the world about billions of dollars, bankrupted major companies and then tried to skate off in to the sunset and their multimillion dollar properties. There are generally accepted accounting practices but it's time to step it up a notch.
Business roundtable is kind of a start. I'd be willing to go as far as to put a letter on the end of a publicly traded company's ticker that symbolizes their lack of committment to the 21st century business code of ethics. Basically, you shouldn't knowingly or unknowingly use slave labor, not knowing isn't an excuse, you should make some reasonable effort to know. You shouldn't "try kill other companies" or put them out of business, competition is actually good and I think fierce competition is what makes this industry great but actively trying to hurt the comptetition is completely unethical and it shouldn't even be joked about; (jokes from CEOs turn into work orders in the trenches, leadership starts at the top, including ethical leadership) There should be some kind of political portion also which would be much harder to come up with in a clean way that would appeal to everyone, basically don't bribe, contributions are one thing but bribes (particularly in developing nations) are something else. Some percentage of profits should be given to employees and the community as a basic standard, clearly some companies need help in this department. etc.. perhaps some stuff regarding gifts.. if your profits to employess on public service ratio is too high (cough, walmart, cough) then maybe you should put more money in to them and a little less in to share holder's pockets.
I'm not advocating some kind of big machine to enforce this or anything like that. It's a basic code of conduct that publicly traded businesses should agree to. If they don't then they are marked for it. It won't hurt startups, they'll have to plan for it but it doesn't cost them anything. If you're "good" then it won't hurt you at all. If you're found breaking the code of conduct, then you're ticker is branded with a letter that signifies as much. There could be some sort of time limit to get out of the dog house and some kind of appeals process, when a huge mega corp acts, they often don't know what all of their pieces are doing but they should and there should be some reasonable attempt to know that they are acting in an ethical manner. You're company agrees to follow it or you get a Z on the end of your ticker. If you're found not following it then you get a Z until you comply or 6 months, which ever is longer.
Then the ethical mutuals out there (enviro. and shit like that) they can have another benchmark, no "Z" companies. I'm not particularly bleeding heart or anything like that, I'm not anti-corporation, but I'm just sick of all this kind of bullshit. Planning to build a monopoly or end your competition is just as bad as being a rober-baron; now some companies will kill themselves and they don't deserve to live but actively trying to cause that in the competition is wrong, I don't want to do business with those companies.
What's to stop MS from having IE add an invisible into the page every time you go to google? (And if you say "antitrust law", you've already lost your argument. Remember what happened last time MS was found guilty of violating anti-trust law?)
Well, if I wish to go to google and the browser automatically redirects me to another site, that would count as compromising my control over my computer, which, by most 'definitions' of today constitutes hacking someone else's computer. IANAL. But I don't have to worry about that because I use FireFox. The only way MS would be able to redirect me to their search engine would be to usurp Google's page and that would most likely end up in a massive lawsuit that could very well put Microsoft bankrupt for (I'm assuming it's called) industrial/corporate espionage, Violation of DMCA, or something along those lines.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
That has nothing to do with dividends. actually, paying dividend in the case of high growth(expected) tech stock is usualy followed by a correction because it dilute the capital available for development. Once a company is established, read reasonable PE ratio then the investors expect dividends. That's obviously not the case of GOOG.
Even then... Do i need to mention Berkshire-Hathaway? ... check how much it's going for. What? $80 000.00. they never paid any dividends... regardless, the they-don't-even-pay-dividend rule has nothing to do with the stock price of google. it's the expectations that drive the price... and lots of people have great expectation in this company.
i wouldn't bet on msft eating away goog...You nailed it. Gates and Ballmer like to talk about Google's "honeymoon", as if the buzz about Google is more about the hype of something new and not about providing great tools and a positive user experience.
Bill Gates said, "They have this slogan that they are going to organize the world's information. Our slogan is that we are going to give people tools to let them organize the world's information."
Notice how Bill said "we are going to GIVE people tools"? That is a lie. Microsoft wants to SELL people tools. Google is the one GIVING tools.
Not just "abusive marketing practices". Huge numbers of abusive practices of all kinds, so many that it might be impossible for one person to document them. Here is just a hint: Microsoft has never been a trust-based company.
Windows 98 had a memory management scheme which would cause it to crash if too many programs were opened. Resellers are required to disclose the names of their customers. Microsoft invented new protocols for connecting to the internet, which, predictably, were found to have security vulnerabilities. With the introduction of Windows XP, Microsoft began integrating its own computers with those of its customers. Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser is amazingly buggy.
Here was an early attempt of mine to document the problems: Windows XP Shows the Direction Microsoft is Going. I only began to scratch the surface of the abuses.