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.

Comments

Aol...

[stevemm81]

Is there some reason why large companies can't resist the temptation to acquire AOL? First Time Warner's notoriously ill-fated merger, right as broadband was emerging... Now Microsoft? I realize AOL has a large number of subscribers, still the most of any ISP, but according to Business Week, they lost 900,000 subscribers just in the second quarter! As broadband becomes cheaper and cheaper, why would anyone stay with AOL? Are they even getting any new subscribers? That article also mentions AOL's goal to become a web portal, with AIM, AOL Music and MapQuest drawing users in. AIM I imagine is growing, as new preteens start using it all the time, but does this really make them any money? There's advertising on the client, I've never heard of anyone actually clicking it, or even really noticing it. MapQuest is okay, but I imagine people will gradually switch to Google Maps. I've never even heard of AOL Music, but it doesn't look like anything spectacular. And who would ever use AOL for search or free email? I think anyone under 35 wouldn't even think to look there. Perhaps that's what these companies don't understand: AOL, and really MSN as well, make most of their money off of customers' cluelessness. As customers get clued in by friends and relatives, they'll move to better services. The customers you have left will use one hour of Internet time a month and will probably eat up any profit AOL could make with their tech support calls alone.

Re:That'll Never Work

[ChrisF79]

I really have to disagree with you. You're looking at what Google is now and what AOL is now. I'm sure the marketing teams at Microsoft have a plan for turning AOL into what they want it to be. That having been said, I think it would take a lot of time to completely change the image of an existing company, but it has been done in the past and could be done again. FYI, Black and Decker did this with their DeWalt brand. Construction guys wouldn't use Black and Decker products at all because they had this cheesy "at home" use to them and it was purely an image thing. So Black and Decker spun off the DeWalt brand and gave it more of a jobsite feel. Next thing you know, construction workers were using DeWalt power tools and loving them, even though they were Black and Decker products with a new name and painted yellow. Admittedly, every case is different, but Microsoft could surely change the image of AOL with the right marketing and new approaches to AOL's business.

Google doesn't bother...

[knopf]

During their A.M. Turing award lecture, Vint and Bob discussed and mentioned several times that it is virtually impossible to change parts of the Internet's underlying structures (e.g., the IP protocols), because the industry and standards are too strong. They mentioned that their luck was at the beginning to be left alone and be able to do anything they want. The standards came afterwards.

Now guess what:

Vinton Cerf works for Google now. Google wants to become a provider and they buy their own communication cables for an alternate internet. Ergo, Google will allow Vint to create a new Inernet protocol, which will have a number of features, which will make AOL/Microsoft cannot provide.

Of course, AOL/Microsoft can buy the market share, but if Google's protocols and Internet is the next generation, then Google will get its market share. And there is nothing that AOL/Microsoft can do about that.

Predatory. Microsoft must be split.

[SamSeaborn]

Once again, evidence that Microsoft needs to be broken into a bunch of smaller companies.

Windows Inc. would be afraid that Google threatens it's dominance of the world's computing platform, but would not be able to use MSN Inc. to battle Google. Windows Inc would be forced to make Windows better.

Office Inc. would want their software running on all computers everywhere, it would make Office for Linux, maybe even Office for the internet -- Office Inc would have no interest in ensuring Windows was the dominant computing platform.

Internet Explorer Inc. would embrace technologies like Java and Flash ensuring seemless compatibility with their browser. They would ship a top notch version of IE for all platforms including Mac and Linux. They would not worry about these technologies threatening Windows' dominance of the world's computing platform.

And, MSN Inc. would have to compete fairly with its competition from Yahoo and Google, and would not have the resources to perform its *illegal* predatory business tactics.

Sam

Re:That'll Never Work

[rben]

While I don't particularly fear for Google, we should all be concerned about the fact that Microsoft, which has twice been convicted of anti-competitive practices, and barely flinched at it's 'punishment', is now gleefully declaring that it's going to destroy another competitor.

This latest goal of Balmer's shows that the company still isn't interested in competing through innovation, as they keep claiming, but through destroying any company that gets in their way.

Somehow, this smells like monopolistic behavior to me, though somehow, I doubt we'll see our government do anything about it.