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Google To Purchase Stake In AOL For $1 Billion

Posted by Zonk on from the that-is-a-lot-of-free-cds dept.

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.

3 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. How to get around "Don't be evil" ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

  2. Not News - Guesswork by VirtualAdept · · Score: 5, Insightful
    So, I took a look at the articles in question. No sources named whatsoever, no comments from company officials, nothing at all to indicate that this is actual news and not just news analysts throwing darts at a wall somewhere and hitting "Google buys AOL". Again, for that matter, since this is something like the third time that news reports of this deal have happened.

    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.

  3. Re:Why? by chrisgeleven · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Simple really. Google keeps AOL from Microsoft.

    Google is used by AOL Search right now. Just the amount of traffic and ad revenue from that results in like $400 million per year in Google's coffers and is 10% of their traffic.

    Without AOL, it deals a decent blow to Google, especially if it were Microsoft who takes it.

    I'm sure this deal will result in a tighter integration between Google and AOL services. Perhaps AIM will be opened up for real to any client, especially GTalk. Perhaps Gmail (or at least its interface) will replace AOL Mail.

    Who knows.

    The main thing though is that Google is paying $1 billion, but will easily recoup that due to the $400+ million a year in revenue it gets from AOL to begin with. This deal is all about preventing Microsoft from expanding in the search area.