Reno - 5:39 am on Mar 2, 2003 (gmt 0)

When AOL + TimeWarner merged, the conventional wisdom (read: press releases) was that they would "change forever the way content was delivered to the desktop".

And what do we have instead? Case is gone, the stock has tanked, and TimeWarner is pissed off that they have AOL in their name!

These things have a way of going very bad very quickly *unless* the new company can offer something that the public genuinely wants, and, unless they can capture the public's good will.

In this case, it would mean providing better search results than Google, and doing that without adding a lot of aggravating nonsense (popups, banners, too many paid results, etc). Is that going to happen? I mean really, as far as the general public is concerned, can *anything* be easier and friendlier than Google? I contend that people do not want more bells and whistles, rather, they want *less*, and let's face it, Google is about as simple as searching gets.

My prediction: Google not only remains the King, it becomes even better positioned now that 2 competitors are soon to be absorbed into the cybervoid. Time will tell whether that is good or bad news, and while I'd like to be surprized, I just don't see how OAF will offer any more than what the public now happily gets for free.