your_store - 7:50 pm on Aug 7, 2006 (gmt 0)

The data is beautiful. I've never seen such a large dataset before.

However, this is a publicity stunt. There's no way AOL accidently packaged the exact data that Google refused to give to the DoJ and published it to their website. Back then, remember everyone was clamering for the SEs to release the same info to the public.

AOL thought they would use that sentiment (months late of course) to build press for the "new, open AOL". However, it quickly backfired and now their PR people have turned it into a mistake by researchers.