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Google To Purchase Stake In AOL For $1 Billion
Lord Haha writes "It appears that Google may be on the verge of purchasing a 5% stake in AOL." From the article: "A tie-up with Google would make sense. Time Warner has been losing out online to rivals like Microsoft and Yahoo. For its part, Google may be interested in getting access to AOL's e-mail and instant messaging service. It would strengthen Google's hand against rivals Yahoo and Microsoft, who have well-established webmail and instant messaging services. Google is a relative newcomer to this area with Gmail and Googletalk." More commentary on News.com. Big change from just a few days ago.
People will say it's a good idea so Google can hold onto AOL's subscriber base, but realistically if AOL aligned with microsoft, people would just leave AOL's sinking ship even faster than they already are.
Bottom line: Google can find a better way to spend that money.
Couldn't Google simply start it's own ISP and grow it to at least 5% the size of AOL? That would give it all the leverage (or more because they can't be outvoted by the other 95%) with none of the nasty associations.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Is this how they get around their "Don't be evil" (phoney) mantra? By buying and outsourcing all the evil to a company that's very good at being evil?
Makes no sense to me. Why buy 5% of a sinking dial-up provider?
But doesn't AOL own the rights to the Netscape browser (repackaged Firefox)? If so, what does this do to the rumor about Opera?
Instead of "Do no evil" it will be "Partner up with evil"?
Wake me up when actual news occurs - complete with named sources or a press release, or something to make me think that this is more than just some writers trying to sound like they're insiders.
I don't get it. Why would Google to do this? Where is the percentage?
I really don't believe that they're after AOL's email service, as GMail is already the class of the field in webmail and a strong competitor for Yahoo and Hotmail. As for AIM, I thought Google launched their own IM service a while ago and it is likely to grow as well as previous Google projects.
Is Google after customer data? An entry into the ISP field? I don't get it.
No, I suspect Google are throwing around the cash to keep existing their revenue share from disappearing. AOL accounts for a very large slice of Google's annual revenues. Its less buying *more* market share than it is keeping the revenue steam from disappearing.
"Google, which prides itself on the purity of its search results, agreed to give favored placement to content from AOL throughout its site, something it has never done before."
The beginning of the end, if true.
I think something to also consider is AOL spent years buying up random small technologies and companies... but then did nothing with them. A couple examples from the top of my head are Winamp and Netscape. Include this with the obvious items that have already been listed and who knows what could happen. I don't know what Google may or may not be after but there could be potential there. More than likely this is just a move to keep AOL from MS for the time being. After all it is only a 5% purchase not a merger. It will be interesting to see what happens.
If you add a teaspoon of fine wine to a barrel of shit, you still have a barrel shit. On the other hand, if you add a teaspoon of shit to a barrel of fine wine you now have a barrel of shit.
You've been hoodwinked by AOL management. The way that AOL works internally will clash to a large degree with how Google does things. AOL people suffer to a large degree from the Not Invented Here syndrome, and get caught up in endless internal fiefdom disputes. The only saving grace here is that you didn't go for 10%. (used to work @ AOL, very glad to be out - most AOL'ers are clueless)
What is interesting is that if AIM opens their network to Google, Google would most likely pressure them into going through the open protocol. If they did that, it would mean that Yahoo and MSN could join it as well. Since Google has the most invested interest in getting all the networks open, since they have by far the smallest user base, it would significantly benefit them to get access to AOL's network, even if it meant Yahoo and MSN could go along for the ride (which Google has encouraged anyway). This could be a big win for everyone and might result in the IM wars being fought entirely in terms of features and experience, not network lockin.
But maybe for all these reasons, AOL will be unwilling to open themselves up, or they might be able to persuade Google to make Google Talk work with AOL's network in a closed manner.
We'll see.