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

Google Must Be Quaking In Their Boots

[ackthpt]

TW/AOL:Losses in the billions.

Microsoft Entertainment/Internet Operations: Losses in the billions

Google have every right to be worried. With the losses these two titans amass, they could well suck up a lot of advertising revenue on the way to losing record billions.

hello, this is microsoft support, press 1 to refinance your mortgage, 2 for MSN help, 3 for pills that enhance your bedtime experience, 4 for office help, 5 to see if you are an instant winner of the tw/msn lottery, 6 for xbox help, 7 to register a microsoft product over the phone or stay on the line to hear nagamo mazoomba, former vice president of internal standards group, request your help in getting $43,675,00 out of a bank account in the caymans.

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

[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

[mOdQuArK!]

Got quite a few family members who use AOL, and they _ALL_ hit Google as soon as they need to search for something, bypassing the AOL default searching mechanism.

They like its simplicity and the fact that it's pretty good about giving them something close to what they were looking for, even with some of the weirdest keyword queries I've seen.

Anecdotal, I know, but don't rule out Google's mindshare even among the technically incompetent.

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)

PlayfullyClever = Troll

[whitehatlurker]

I'm not sure why these people get so many articles posted. They are quite up front about who they are / what they do. I guess Zonk likes to reward honesty ;-)

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.

Throwing their money down the drain...

[puppetman]

Two big, bloated companies, where the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing (ever), combining to take on a small-ish, smart, fast moving company like Google (that happens to have gobs of cash to fund their wildest dream).

I don't think anything will happen, other than a bunch of money being spent.

If they really wanted to compete, they would hire a bunch of really bright people, form a new company for them to work at, with a new independent management team, and money to spend. Let them go after Google using the best tools and technologies, and then give them an instant market by using whatever they come up with at Microsoft/AOL/TimeWarner.

How Stupid is Slashdot?

[Seumas]

In addition to posting blatant advertising for the BeatlesBeatles and Joel on Software and TheEscapist and other stuff in a very "Microsoft/TimeWarner future partnership ass-kissing networked" sort of way, they don't even have a problem accepting submissions and posting them from blatant trolls and rip-offs like the submitter of this article (see the following current headline on the site of the submitter of this article):

In short, the editors are such fucking incompetant idiots that they willingly and knowingly entertain the submissions of admitted plagiarists. On the other hand, it's a really great way to make sure that Slashdot is never taken seriously anywhere by anyone. Seriously, Slashdot editors (Malda, etc) -- get your shit together. Half the joy of even bothering to show up and check Slashdot out each day now isn't for the articles or discussions, but to see what careless, stupid, sell-out, dimwitted shit you guys will do next.

Win Slashdot? (12/05/05) - PyWiz

Some of the slashbots have started to take notice that all of our posts are blatantly plagiarized. They wonder out loud in their replies why we would do such a thing? Well for all you curious slashbots that wonder why we felt the need to beat the world's most famous News for Trolls website, your answer is here

Slashdot: News for Trolls. Stuff That Doesn't Matter.

Okay, first of all for all of your slashbots that are out of the loop, we (known on Slashdot as PlayfullyClever) are blatant plagiarists. Almost (and by almost I mean more than 90%) all of our posts are reposts found using the Anti-Slash Database Tool, which allows the user to search for high-modded posts on a particular topic. Basically when a new article comes out on Slashdot we skim the summary for key words and plug them into the database tool. When we find a relevant-looking (I say relevant-looking because we don't actually read the summary so sometimes our posts are a little off base) post, we simply copy paste it and post to Slashdot. The funny part about this is that almost all of our posts get rated 5, just as they were originally. It is especially amusing when we get a high rating in spite of the fact that someone spots our plagiarism and points it out in a reply, as happened here.

Why would we do this? Well, there are several reasons. First of all, we do it for kicks. As I said earlier, it is rather amusing how little new information is actually added in Slashdot discussions. Simply towing the party line will get you a 5 rating, even if, as happens in many cases with our reposting, the post is slightly or completely offtopic.

The second major reason is promoting our site. We have a link in our signature and of course when we submit articles we get hits from people clicking on our name. We've gotten over 500 unique hits in the past 3 days the site has been up, and considering the quality of site we have, that's some quality advertising.

Some of you might be thinking that we're selfish and that we're destroying what once used to be a respected discussion forum. Well, you're wrong. First of all, with all the FPs, Penisbirds, and GNAA trolls, our reposting is hardly degrading anything of worth. Second of all, the moderation system is build to handle just our type of cleverness (namely, playful) by allowing readers to mod us down if they don't find our comment interesting. Obviously, even though it is plagiarized, our comments still hold the interest of a large number of moderators. Of course there is the slight moral problem of representing someone elses work as our own, but I mean come on, this is the 21st century, get over it.

In conclusion, all you slashbots who whine about PlayfullyClever being a "blatant plagiarist": you're right. Now STFU. kthx, py

Re:How Stupid is Slashdot?

[Seumas]

Did the mods even READ my post? Read the post. Look at the submitter of the article. Click on the submitter's name/link. Duh.

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). . . .

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.

Trust

[SimonInOz]

Why is Google successful?

Trust.

Google appear to put the user first. Indeed, that's where they started, building a search engine to help people. Money came later (and haven't they done well?).

Microsoft and Time Warner started with wanting to make money. That comes - and, more to the point, feels as though it comes - way before the user.

And we don't trust them.

Google ads rely on advertisers (the person with the ad, and the person with the ad space) trusting them to put the right ads in the right place. Google does - and everyone makes money. Trust, trust trust - the foundation stone of trade.

But who would trust Microsoft and Time Warner to do that?

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.)

Re:doomsday.

[colonslash]

It is easy to pull numbers out of your ass. In fact, I'll pull them out of onestat's ass: The 4 largest search engines on the web are:

1. Google 56.9%
2. Yahoo 21.2%
3. MSN Search 8.9%
4. AOL Search 3.2%

If your numbers are from TFA, I can't see it because the link is giving me a Yahoo! error page, so I went to Google to find some info.
Are your numbers for unique visitors to any page owned by the companies in your list? Do those numbers even matter- aren't we talking about ads in search results?

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.