Forum Moderators: mack
also reuters is repeating [today.reuters.com] the story:
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Time Warner Inc is closing in on a deal with Microsoft Corp. to team up on an online advertising service to compete with Google Inc, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the talks. The paper said the two companies were now focusing on a deal that would combine their advertising-related assets, with little or no money changing hands. It said they expected to reach an agreement before the end of the year, but that it was still possible that Time Warner's America Online unit could strike a deal with competitor Google instead. Time Warner has been holding talks with both Microsoft and Google over AOL, sources familiar with the situation have told Reuters and other media.
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Love AOL or hate AOL they do have significant market share of eyeballs for both natural serps and advertising
Any body have idea of percentage market share
And does this tell us the bidding wars that was expected for AOL is over and done with
steve
I was afraid this would happen. I love my AOL traffic and it was so easy to concentrate on Google to cover both Google and AOL.
I rank well in MSN, I just dislike their SERPS because they are too easy to spam.
I guess this is why Jim Cramer on Mad Money was talking about a Google downgrade yesterday.
Would be intrested to know an implementation date too.
I am happy that the "Search Engine Wars" has begun (or continue, or renew).
While the war is on, we, suppliers get more and more opportunities.
Still - Google has well over half of all search in its own right, so the big battle still has to be hearts and minds of individuals, not deals in wall street.
At least it makes the MSN forum come alive again :)
[edited by: Receptional at 3:59 pm (utc) on Dec. 6, 2005]
I wonder how many users AOL will lose because of this?
I never thought of that. You are right, I bet some of the users will just jump over to google.com and avoid aol search.
Great news for spammers, not so good news for decent websites.
A short term view, I think. MSN's search is young and they are working hard on improving it for the user. That quest won't stop. Let's assume quality and relevence carries on improving on MSN - and I think it will - then it is good news for the industry regardless of your hat colour. Of course, it is not good if you currently ride high all over Google alone, but surely nobody would base a business model on that alone forever would they ;)
Does this mean AOL is going to feature MSN Keywords over Google AdWords? A beta test product, which has not yet proven itself on the open market, to show results?
MSN has a very good (and complex) product - but it's untested on mass scale.
However, the query share that AOL brings to MSN means that MSN will be a solid 3rd player in the search arena with enough total volume that it can't be ignored.
Very interesting things ahead in 2006, and this is just the beginning.
If AOL goes to the MSN results, it'll be a very nice New Year.
>>>I wonder how many users AOL will lose because of this?
That is going to be an interesting question, yes. If AOL lose market share, Microsoft have probably sweetened the pot a little somewhere, so it may not affect the bottom line for AOL. But if market share does drop, then that would indicate just how far MSN needs to up its game to stay in the game. It would be an excellent yardstick to measure.
Nothing against Goog, other sites I have are doing well in it. But with MSN taking a bigger chunk of the market, it will actually mean I can pay way less attention to what the search engines are doing. If I get killed by one engine, another will likely pick up the slack.
This is good news for webmasters. Build a good site, and one or another search engine will like it.
Before, that was irrelevant, because it only mattered if Goog liked you. Now, hopefully, so long as one of the major engines likes your site, you'll be in a good position.
Anyway...
This will hurt us, but adaptation has never failed us before.
Probaly healthier in the long run.
It said they expected to reach an agreement before the end of the year, but that it was still possible that Time Warner's America Online unit could strike a deal with competitor Google instead.
You'll also notice that the GOOG stock is up today. Does that really sounds like they're losing 10% of their revenue?
"Last year, Google turned over $300 million in revenue to AOL. Their current contract runs well into 2006." -WSJ story
MSN's search is young and they are working hard on improving it for the user.
Well, at least they are working hard on finding obscure queries in which they provide the best results.
