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Google Counters AOL Deal Speculation
arrrrg writes "Google has responded to speculation of biased search results and flashy banner ads arriving in the wake of their recent $1 Billion deal with AOL. On their official blog, they deny that users will see any negative changes. In particular they maintain that search results will remain unbiased and the site will remain free of banner ads." From the post: "Indexing more of AOL's content. Our goal is to organize all of the world's information. When we say 'all the world's information,' this includes AOL's. We're going to work with the webmasters at AOL -- just as we work with webmasters all over the world -- to help them understand how the Google crawler works (with regard to robots.txt, how to use redirects, non-html content, etc.) so we don't inadvertently overlook their content."
Yea, a lot of people would pay 1 billion dollars just to look at AOL's content. OMGWTFLOLOLROFLCOPTERS
Jeez, why didn't they just use one of the damn free cds?
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Can we atlease overlook all of the AOL popup ads? I can't believe that people actually paid for AOL. As far as I'm concerned all they did was pay for popup ads and under par internet service. If it was for the instant messenger, you could get that for free.
Man, you'd have to PAY me a billion dollars to work with AOL "webmasters". A lot of these people still thing AOL=The Internet.
- There will be no banner ads on the Google homepage or web search results pages. There will not be crazy, flashy, graphical doodads flying and popping up all over the Google site. Ever.
Will the same be true for all the hundreds of thousands of sites in Google's ad display network?
Google achieved much through its innovation in text advertising. It proved that relevance is way more effective than blinking and moving graphics.
But now my local Google rep tells me Google accepts graphical banner content including Macromedia Flash format.
They're making some sort of guarantees about their own Google web site in TFA, but what about all their affiliate relays? Will Google allow customers to flood those with annoying graphical ads?
I wonder how much of that Billion dollars was spent for AOL content compared to Time Warner content...perhaps this is a way of sweetening the pot for their lyric database, movie database, news service and video archives.
Walk with Music;
Dude, seeing AOL content IS a negative change :(
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
...when they say they "want to organize the world's data, including AOL's." Doesn't Google already crawl and catalog sites on AOL or created by AOL subscribers? Or are they talking about things like multimedia content that is only available to AOL users? I was under the impression that internet content served by AOL worked just like any other site on the internet. Does AOL currently block Google from cataloging/caching all content served by AOL via robots.txt or other methods? I am not an AOL subscriber so if someone out there could share with the rest of the class, it would be appreciated.
Since very few folks will RTFA, here's the text in its entirety
The recent announcement of the AOL partnership has been the source of a lot of rumors and misconceptions. We'd like to clear some of those up.
- Biased results? No way. Providing great search is the core of what we do. Business partnerships will never compromise the integrity or objectivity of our search results. If a partner's page ranks high, it's because they have a good answer to your search, not because of their business relationship with us.
- Indexing more of AOL's content. Our goal is to organize all of the world's information. When we say "all the world's information," this includes AOL's. We're going to work with the webmasters at AOL -- just as we work with webmasters all over the world -- to help them understand how the Google crawler works (with regard to robots.txt, how to use redirects, non-html content, etc.) so we don't inadvertently overlook their content.
- AOL will receive a credit towards advertising purchased through Google's ad program. You might wonder if this will affect the ad auction. It won't. We don't offer preferential treatment on advertising (in either the auction or the display) to any of our partners.
- We have a service called "onebox" for which we provide some additional links separate from ads (sponsored links) and search results. (Try searching on [new york transit strike] and look for the news section.) AOL and its products have always been a part of onebox, along with many other providers, and will continue to be.
- There will be no banner ads on the Google homepage or web search results pages. There will not be crazy, flashy, graphical doodads flying and popping up all over the Google site. Ever.
Our service and our business works because of you - our users. You're important to us and something that we think about all the time -- as we build new products, negotiate deals, and think about what our future holds.
We're looking forward to what AOL can help us do for you, and believe that our new agreement with them will only create a better experience for you in 2006 and beyond -- one where you can continue to trust that we're giving you a result because it's the best one we can possibly provide.
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
What about google's collaboration with china's government?
Does "all the world's information" includes information about human rights, liberty and all this stuff?
The problem is the have a built in structural conflict of interest.
They do well when AOL does.
Even though it seems a stretch, these structural types of conflict of interest can be surprisingly powerful.
Give it five years. At some point, instead of trying to pick the best choices for onebox with the goal of it being the best for the user, they will pick an AOL option, and rationalize it will be the best for the user. It's a subtle difference, but almost guaranteed.
We also see from lobbying in the political realm, that access means a TON. Just getting alot more overlap with Google will let AOL really tune into what they are going to be doing in a way that others won't be able to.
Be interesting to see how this unfolds. Feels very business driven, and even there not sure I buy it. If you have to pay $1b to sell your ads on someone elses site, you're not really selling them. Better to just adjust the cut they get until they and more people everywhere cary them.
But of course, it is Google...they could not possibly be lying, can they? I am really concerned about this. Not the fact that they have all this power, but more the fact that nobody seems to see any problem with it. "Because they do no evil". They still are a company, a big one, and companies (espacially big ones) are more or less meant to be evil. Why would Google be an exception? They did, after all, buy a big chunk of stock in a comonly known as evil one...!
The most important information for a company such as Google is not from any information stores that Google will display publicly in a search response. It isn't from databases or PDFs or HTML files or any of the like.
In my opinion, the most important information is that which is contained in private e-mails. Many users are not weary in the least to tell other users very private ideas, thoughts and connections.
Google has harvesting engines that can associate words, thoughts and connections better that previous generations of their code, and this is used primarily to help advertisers associate their products and services with the as many different keywords as they possibly can.
Websites are generally static, but e-mail is always changing. Even the busiest blogger might change their site 3 times a day, a news site might change it 20 times, but an e-mail user could send and receive dozens. Imagine tying in all of a user's e-mails together to find insight into what they want and like and need.
At this point, is Google sorting through our e-mails at gmail? I'd say no. I don't think this will last -- and AOL's e-mail system is gigantic. The signal-to-noise ratio is pretty low, but it is still massive data. On top of that, the noise that does exist (spam) may help Google implement better anti-spam routines in gmail.
Of course, I could be all wrong, but I've been studying Google for years now, and nothing they do surprises me. Everything they've been up to has been unique in how they attack their problems, and I do believe that their desire to catalog everything is true. I've said for over 15 years that the future is not products or services but information. The right company that can aggregate and align information for every user (consumer or producer) will be the wealthiest company in history.
Microsoft who?
AOL is evil. They have been evil since the C-64 days. At no time have they not been evil.
So, giving AOL a billion dollars to continue their work IS evil.