WyrdoManx - 10:49 am on Nov 19, 2003 (gmt 0)

Story from [seattletimes.nwsource.com...]

AOL buys multimedia SingingFish search engine.

Okay. I see the logic there. Multimedia searches will be a big thing in a year or so. But why AOL? Their troubles are legion, I think the one of the few deals giving them a boost these days is their Adsense partnership with Google.

If you were AOL, if Adsense was an important vein of lifeblood, would you think of "cheating on Google"?

Or am I being too paranoid?

Okay. For sure speculation (and a good thing I'm not supposed to be a disinterested reporter here) I go back to my observation that AOL proxies turn up as visitors to my hobby site whenever there's a deep Googlebot crawl.

Perhaps it's not only T-Online who is thinking about buying AOL. Perhaps AOL is trying to make itself look more attractive.