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Microsoft and Time Warner Team Up Against Google
PlayfullyClever wrote to mention a Reuters report on an online advertising deal between Microsoft and Time Warner. The two companies are teaming up to take on Google's advertising network. From the article: "The [WSJ] said the two companies were now focusing on a deal that would combine their advertising-related assets, with little or no money changing hands. It said they expected to reach an agreement before the end of the year, but that it was still possible that Time Warner's America Online unit could strike a deal with competitor Google instead."
So the deal is that AOL would drop Google as its main Internet search provider and switch to Microsoft's MSN service, because under their current agreement, Google derived about 11 percent of its first-half revenue from AOL.
But what happens if AOL users still go to Google despite the default search site is MSN?
MS still commands about 80% of the browser market, and its browser defaults searches to MSN, if this cannot help it, I doubt a deal with AOL could.
I believe a more substantial way is to be a good search provider, and users will be self-inviting.
I guess Time Warner stands to win whichever way the deal goes.
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
Remember when AOL and Microsoft were mortal ememies? This only goes to show that just as in politics, there are no long term enemies, just long term interests
Uhm... I don't know how "nice" they are to larger companies with larger legal budgets, but every smaller company I've ever heard "teaming up" with Microsoft has gotten screwed over when it was to MS's advantage to do so.
How much of googles searches does AOL account for? How will this affect Google Adsense? Less views = less money for those in the program?
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who has been critical of Time Warner's strategy, has also said that he would hold Time Warner board members personally responsible if they forged a deal for AOL that valued the Internet provider too cheaply.
How will Carl Icahn do this? Is this one very rich man trying to kill a deal?
Why would Time Warner want to screw AOL? Hmmm... what is going on behind the scenes? Or is this a sign that AOL is changing its strategy?
Or maybe Microsoft is scared of google, and is doing everything they can to prevent their search services from going the direction of excite.com.
If and when Google does survive all of these attacks, they'll be a stronger company for it. Of course, the nearest term consequence could be a company whose eventual aggressiveness would make Microsoft look like a kitten. At least they won't sneak up and take everyone by surprise the way that Microsoft seemed to in the early 1990s with Windows 3.1, 95 and NT 4.0.
Of course, since they're in the business of storing and processing information, Google could end up being a greater threat than Microsoft ever could in the wrong hands.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
"Microsoft and Time Warner team up against Google" - Based on the article, it could have also been worded, "Google and Time Warner team up against Microsoft". No decisions have been made and both Microsoft and Google are looking to team up with Time Warner.
Their sites are WAY to cluttered!
Google is simple. There arent millions of distrations. You dont have to SEARCH for the search bar. you dont have to wait for the eyeblasters to load so that they can in turn obstruct your searching. GEEEZ people. it looks good the first time but after the 9999999th time you login just to do a simple search, and have to wait forever for the main page to connect to billions of addservers to serve you graphic adds, you end up back at google.
Me personally, I will boycott any companies that tried to gang up on Google just because they cannot compete one-on-one with Google. If a company comes along and can beat Google, I would gladly try them out. However, I would not try out companies that try to compete on business terms instead of technical/service terms. If MS/AOL wants to beat Google, let them offer a better product/service. As of now, Google offers the best features/speed for me. I guess MS can't take their own medicine.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
Crappy companies banning together...
Makes it even easier to avoid both of them!!
(Ya'll stand a little bit closer together now... I only got one shotgun shell left and I want to make it count.)
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX
AOL got 120 million visitors, yahoo 115 millions, MSN 110million, google 70million this past September. MS just became top dog by almost triple google and about double yahoo as far as online advertising markets reach goes. There are companies that are dying to get their hands on a way to get in front of 200million people, that's allot more appealing then 70million. Google might have slightly better tech for the time being, but MS will catch up, and they will steal google's thunder. Google hasn't been able to create much of a profit in any way other then click ads and that is in pretty big jeopardy.
With the largest repository of media content in the world, combine that with the most users, ground breaking IPTV tech, and the two largest telcos in the country, Microsoft is looking really good right now. Google better do some sole searching, because they are in some trouble.
My recommendation is to sell sell sell (google's stock that is).
The bottom line is that people use Google because it works and they can trust them. Do you trust MS or AOL/TW?
The thing is, I really hate being yet another "Slashdot is going downhill!" whiner, but they really seem to be. I've been around long enough to remember Slashdot before it was called Slashdot. Through Hellmouth and Jon Katz and when they started the interviews and started adding all these other subsections and colors and (OMFG - CSS compliance as of late!). And in all that time, Slashdot has fluctuated. The whole Andover thing. The whole OSDN thing. Michael getting married (WTF?) and Geeks in Space . . .
But in the last six months, it has gone from "sometimes lazy slashdot editor behavior" where they post a dupe or let a big typo slip by to the point where you can rarely go a day without multiples of the following happening - and I'm just talking about in the front-page section. I'm not talking about the GNAA type of stuff in the responses.
+ Duplicate from the same week, day or hours before.
+ Duplicate from the same or previous years.
+ Trip...er..licate . . .
+ Intentional slashvertisement.
+ Unwitting (or uncaring) slashvertisement ala **BeatlesBeatles, etc. Or worse - press relases.
+ Unwitting (or uncaring) contribution to trolls (ala CleverlyFunny and others)
+ Crap I've already seen on Drudgeerport. If Drudgereport is reporting it, it's sort of . . . done with.
+ Wierd slashvertisement sort of buddy system gratis thing where a particular site seems to get EVERY article they write featured on Slashdot. It's almost like one of the editors' girlfriends ran TheEscapist or PennyArcade or JoelonSoftware or something and they felt compelled to post a blurb on Slashdot about every single article out of support.
And sure, people could "just leave", but a lot of us have been here for seven or eight years and really don't want to have to do that. But man . . . it's almost like the Slashdot editors don't even care about Slashdot anymore. I find a lot of faults with Zonk, but at least he seems to TRY. It even seems as if the rest of the Slashdot elders just always decide to go fishing or take long naps for weeks at a time and stick Zonk and ScuttleMonkey with all the actual work and don't follow up to make sure their quality is up to par (or maybe even teach them what to do in the first place.... not that the old Slashdot editors seem to have a clue anymore what that should be either). . . .
It seems that most people are in favor of Google "winning". I don't want either to win. Why? It's bad for us. It's bad to have one complacent company in complete control of a market. Here's what happens, as history shows over and over and over.
1. Company 1 becomes a rising star.
2. Everyone loves company 1 because they have good products, service, blah
3. Company 1 beats out company 2, 3, 4, and 5 to become master of it's universe
4. Company 1 has no competition, so they have no motivation to innovate, progress, explore
5. Company 1 easily assasinates any small company that attempts to gain any foothold in the market, instead of competing fairly.
6. The market stagnates while company 1 does everything in it's power to maintain it's stranglehold.
It's bad for competition, period. There's nothing good about ANY company, even the beloved "we will do no evil, blindly trust us" google, to be a monopoly. If they do ultimately win, take my word for it, eventually you WILL see a decrease in the quality of their service until they become the evil they claim they never will.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.