Google and AOL Alliance

Expanded Alliance

[xcandyman]

Business Wire Story Here [home.businesswire.com]

America Online, Inc., the world's leading interactive services company, and Google, developer of the award-winning Google search engine, today announced an expanded multi-year alliance for AOL(R) Search that will bring members search results from the industry-leading Google search engine as well as Google's highly relevant sponsored links. America Online today also announced a series of enhancements to AOL Search to provide a more intuitive search experience.

New Features in AOL Search

America Online also announced a variety of improved search capabilities. The new, enhanced AOL Search is an integral part of the AOL(R) and AOL(R) for Broadband services, including the latest version, AOL(R) 9.0 Optimized. AOL Search delivers Google search results plus a powerful layer of uniquely relevant, timely, localized content and programming from across the AOL service. This value-add layer is programmed by AOL Search editors to provide a smarter and more intuitive online search experience to help AOL members find what they are looking for faster and more easily.

[Brett_Tabke]

excellent!

[creative craig]

The bit about uniquely relevant content sounds very good in theory, lets hope it works out.

[chris_f]

Woohoo! Very good news. Let money continue to role in :)

[nutsandbolts]

Great! Those AOL users love to spend :) God bless 'em....

[andy_boyd]

Great news, more customers from AOL please! :-) They do seem to like spending online.

[gniland]

So let me get today's event straight

AOL - UP assuming that they were able to use Yahoo and Inktomi as leverage in this Google deal

Google - UP - Secured a significant avenue of traffic for search and adwords for many years (didn't see the specific #)

LookSmart - Down becuase their biggest client just told them to take a walk, and because of this news that same biggest client can now buy them for almost nothing

MSN - They don't care if they are up or down because they have more money than most countries and can buy or build anything they want

[Rugles]

Why is all this news happening today?

[Marcia]

>>AOL - UP assuming that they were able to use Yahoo and Inktomi as leverage in this Google deal

gniland, who else is there that AOL could have have gone with? It kind of looks like Yahoo is intending to be a serious challenge to AOL, wouldn't that give Google a bit of negotiating leverage rather than the other way around?

[Yidaki]

Wonderful news!

[HughMungus]

Why is all this news happening today?

It's earnings time!

[northweb]

Hats off to AOL. Great News

[Namaste]

localized content

geolocation?

[gniland]

Marcia - AOL and Yahoo are both portals and can be viewed as competition. IMHO I don't think they are. The reason why AOL has big traffic is because there are and will always be alot of inexperienced interent users who log into their AOL accounts and listen to "You've Got Mail". (I am always amazed at business conferences by the number of times I hear that sound.)

I think AOL has alot of traffic that can not be easily stolen since it comes from the AOL program and not a browser. Therefore they can use Inktomi or Google depending on who gives them the most kickbacks.

[Tor]

This is exactly what I needed to hear before the winter sets in here in Norway. Excellent news!

[Jenstar]

Mutual profitability through AdSense was also discussed with this agreement as well, and it appears they will be expanding this further (they had been using some AdSense as part of a two month trial).
[webmasterworld.com...]

[HughMungus]

Here's a question:

I'm on AOL. I did a search. It says, "enhanced by Google". Why are there no google ads?

[TheRealTerry]

That's what the sponsored links before and after the main results are. They don't appear as boxes, but rather more like the Overture listings appear in Yahoo.

[HughMungus]

Ah, I see. I also see that they appear to be blocking my adwords ad (maybe because I'm running a service that competes with one of AOL's new services). Bummer.