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."

Comments

Uh?

[SatanicPuppy]

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?

Re:Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

When Google came for the AOL'ers, I said nothing, because I was not a 12 year old girl.
When Google came for the MSN'ers, I said nothing, because I was not a 50 year old grandma.
When Google came for the Myspace'rs, I said nothing, because I was not a 15 year old emo freak.
When Google came for the Yahoo'ers, I said nothing, because I was not a mentality retarded person.

Then, Google came for slashdot, and I was like.. meh.. whatever.

Re:Uh?

[Will Fisher]

I read that (and I might be wrong) that Google makes $400 Million in ad revenue from AOL subscribers (who, presumably, arrive at google from AOL). If microsoft had bought this steak in AOL, and cut Google out of AOL, then Google would be out $400Million a year.

I see this purchase as Google protecting the traffic it gets from AOL. In a little over 2 years they will have made their $1 billion back.

Remember when Ballmer said "I'm going to kill google?". Google just spent some of its HUGE cash pile on protection against MS. Fair play to them.

Re:Uh?

[geniusj]

... If microsoft had bought this steak in AOL ...

Yum..

Re:Uh?

[Haydn Fenton]

I know slashdotters don't like to actually read any articles (just like I'm not going to read this one), but surely I can't be the only one who has read Googles press release (20th Dec) on their AOL business?

Under the strategic alliance, Google and AOL will continue providing search technology to AOL's network of Internet properties worldwide. The agreement's broad range of new features for users and advertisers include:

• Creating an AOL Marketplace through white labeling of Google's advertising technology - enabling AOL to sell search advertising directly to advertisers on AOL-owned properties;
• Expanding display advertising throughout the Google network;
• Making AOL content more accessible to Google Web crawlers;
• Collaborating in video search and showcasing AOL's premium video service within Google Video;
• Enabling Google Talk and AIM instant messaging users to communicate with each other, provided certain conditions are met; and
• Providing AOL marketing credits for its Internet properties.

[...]
Google will become the only shareholder in AOL other than Time Warner. Time Warner will retain management control and full strategic flexibility over AOL, while Google will have certain customary minority shareholder rights, including those associated with any future sale or public offering of AOL.

For $1b, Google are getting a hell of a lot more search content, video content, IM users, along with a share of AOLs advertising revenue and they're gonna continue to get their search features provided to AOL users, and let's not forget that MS not cannot bully Google around as easily by buying a share in AOL themselves anymore. Whether it's worth it only time will tell, but I don't think it's been too bad of a deal.

Text ads work

[wombatmobile]

- 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?

Re:Text ads work

[ozydingo]

My guess is that will be up to the site displaying the ads. And for that i'd say you can't fault Google; they'd be losing out on a lot of potential marketshare by not offering graphical ads. If some website wants to get paid to host some ads, it's up to them to decide what type of ads they want to host. And if they want to host banner ads (more money in those, i assume?) and Google can't do anything for them, then they'll just host banner ads through another service (doubleclick, whatever). Google loses out on a potential customer. By offerring graphical ads Google gets to snag those customers, but that does not mean we'll see more annoying popups and banners, it only means those websites that aer willing to subject their readers to that kind of thing in the first place have another option to choose from. We may see some sites that use Google text ads switch to graphical ads; but I think the major change will be Google will steal away customers from doubleclick and the likes--just a change in what service the webstie that already host graphical ads use, not necessarily an increase in the number of sites that use graphical ads.

You could get into a whole moral debate about not offerring a service you fundamnetally disagree with, and that offerring it because "if we don't do it someone else will anyway" is no excuse; but noone ever said (well, Google never said (did they?)) that they're on a moral campaign against graphical ads, just that they recognize that they'll get more users if they don't have them on their own site. If someone else wants to have graphical ads, well that's their own decision to make. I'll just be that much less likely to visit that site, and that's my decision to make.

Re:Text ads work

[alphakappa]

You always have the option to choose graphical ads or text ads in your adsense account. Graphical ads have always been part of adsense - most folks just choose not to use them.

Time Warner

[cez]

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.

Contradiction

[Poromenos1]

Dude, seeing AOL content IS a negative change :(

What about China?

[Anonymous Coward]

- 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.

What about google's collaboration with china's government?

- 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.

Does "all the world's information" includes information about human rights, liberty and all this stuff?

Built in conflict of interest

[augustz]

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.

The most important information's not from .HTML

[dada21]

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?