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."

Comments

MSN Quick Fix

[biocute]

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.

Re:MSN Quick Fix

[Cenuij]

Search no, advertising yes.

This wont help MS in the search wars at all but being able to double the audience of your target ads overnight ( MSN + AOL portal ) certainly doesn't harm the ad revenue bottom line.

Re:MSN Quick Fix

[Wisgary]

Exactly what I thought, as soon as I read the article I thought "Oh come on, the first thing anyone does when they reformat or install a new IE version is go to Tools>Options>homepage www.google.com" If the default search for IE is MSN search, and not even the dolts who don't know crap about the internet use it, how is this deal going to help MSN at all?

Re:MSN Quick Fix

[ATeamMrT]

But what happens if AOL users still go to Google despite the default search site is MSN?

The people I know who use AOL, and this is a small number of people with dial up, they use AOL to search. They don't open up a second IE window to use google.

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.

Does MS still do this from IE? I thought there was a setting where the user can select what search engine to use, or to disable searching from the address bar. I never search from the address bar, so I don't know.

So the deal is that AOL would drop Google as its main Internet search provider and switch to Microsoft's MSN service

On the surface, this might look like a good deal for MS. But I remember how everyone thought MSNBC would become bigger than CNN. Correct me if I am wrong, but is MSNBC even #3? What happened with marrying the largest computer/tech comany with NBC?

MS is marrying with a dying company. How much longer will dial up be a market? How will AOL continue to stay alive, how much impact will their search website have?

MS should be looking forward. I see this as a short term deal, to get more of a market share in search engines. But that advantage will be gone in a few years. I think MS is trembling that google will dominate all searches, and MS will be about as popular as dogpile.

Re:MSN Quick Fix

[shrtcircuit]

Having watched the less technically-inclined use the Internet, they will use whatever search engine shows up on their screen so long as it spits something back when they type in a few words and click "Go".

If AOL switches to MSN, >95% of the users will not care unless MSN can't give them what they need.

Re:MSN Quick Fix

[Ruff_ilb]

I'd agree with this - despite the home page or default search site, google is now a household brand (if you could call it a brand) that's got a pretty permanent hold on what MS and other companies discounted as something useless. As google expands to the email and IM (I know, that's a stretch) areas, google is used for more and more things. I doubt it'll lose much from just having the default engine switched.

Then again, as MS is well aware, half of any "prediction" is just going to be guesswork.

Re:MSN Quick Fix

[MightyMartian]

That is not an observation that I have seen. While some users I deal with do simply stay with MSN, most seem to prefer Google and will go through the bother of figuring out how to change their homepage. Remember, MSN is the default on most new Windows boxes, and if your theory held an validity, Google would be a bit player, and that clearly is not the case, so at the end of the day, I have no idea how AOL using MSN means a damn thing.

Re:MSN Quick Fix

[IAmTheDave]

Not to mention - I believe - that Yahoo! once used Google results as well. Yahoo! no longer does (as far as I'm aware) or at least agregates them, and Google didn't seem to suffer too much. Do I have my information wrong?

Re:MSN Quick Fix

[vishbar]

That would be one of the worst mistakes that they could make. Google is nearly a household name for internet searches, and I'm sure that there are MANY AOL users that are Google addicts. I'd predict losses in the thousands if they ever tried to pull a stunt like that.

MSFT and AOL

[navycow]

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

Re:MSFT and AOL

[gamer4Life]

Well Sony at least allows other companies to compete. You can argue that it's DRM and content protection schemes have bungled their electronics division enough to make them less competitive.

Sony does innovate though, and by doing so, it pushes other companies to innovate as well. Compare this to Microsoft that drives the competition out of the market, and does nothing, until someone comes out with something innovative that can compete with them. (Firefox, Google, Linux)

Re:MSFT and AOL

[ndogg]

Mortal enemies? AOL was using Microsoft's software even when they had other options. The rhetoric between the two had no substance.

Doing business with Microsoft?

[erroneus]

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.

So much going on here... lets look at this closer.

[ATeamMrT]

The Journal said that, under negotiations between Time Warner and Microsoft, AOL would drop Google as its main Internet search provider and switch to Microsoft's MSN service.

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.

You gotta give their enemies credit

[ShatteredDream]

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.

You have to love Slashdot.

[ninja_assault_kitten]

"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.

And they wont win because....

[xmorg]

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.

Re:Bull Schitt

[AstroDrabb]

The GP wrote:

Microsoft Entertainment/Internet Operations:

Why did you chop off the first part? He/She was referring to the entertainment/internet ops. Last I heard, the MSN ISP was not pulling in the customers. Last I heard, XBox has been in the red since day one. Last I heard, XBox 360 has tons of bugs. Maybe MSN search is making some profit, but that doesn't negate what the GP stated. If you look at these two business units, they will most likely be in the red. Most of MS's business units are in the red except for OS and Office. Google on the other hand, is in the black.

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.

Good!

[Phillup]

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.)

trust?

[dotdevin]

The bottom line is that people use Google because it works and they can trust them. Do you trust MS or AOL/TW?

Re:How Stupid is Slashdot?

[Seumas]

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). . . .

Re:doomsday.

[Killall -9 Bash]

AOL's search page gets hits because it's (last time i checked, which admittadly wasn't recently) the default serch page for AOL.

Yahoo gets hits because they were giving away free email when AOL execs were still wondering why someone who has an ISP would need a free email account. Their search engine, while not as powerfull as Google's, does have its merits.... better geographical searches (nice for when i can't find any pizza menus to order from), and a higher likelyhood of search results I was looking for rather than 50,000 pages of exactly what i asked for.

MSN getting 110 (10 million less than AOL) is nothing short of abject failure. Its the default homepage on 90% of the computers IN THE WORLD.

In short, AOL's niche market (internet training wheels) is soon to be obsolete, and MSN.com can't get more hits than AOL.com even when its the default search page on most of the computers in the world.

My prediction-- Google will outlive the PC platform (im assuming that the world wide web will outlive the PC). MSN and AOL will not. Yahoo..... who knows.