Google Buys 5% of AOL

Google is buying 5% of AOL for one billion dollars. Although Google has been the search engine on AOL for some time, Microsoft recently made a move to change that. MSN offered AOL millions per year to dump Google and go with MSN search instead. That didn’t happen, though. Instead, this Google purchase is a 5 year deal that has Google giving AOL millions of dollars of free advertising on Google to promote AOL’s network of websites. AOL also gets the exclusive right to sell online banner ads for Google. AOL will keep about 20 percent of the proceeds from those ad sales, while Google will get about 80 percent. (source: WashingtonPost.com)

But what’s the real deal? According to the New York Times, "Google, which prides itself on the purity of its search results, agreed to give favored placement to content from AOL throughout its site, something it has never done before."  (To login to the New York Times, registration is required. May I suggest BugMeNot.com?)

Favored placement to AOL content? How is that going to work exactly? I’m not sure this is okay with me, unless we are talking about completely transparent favored placement, like the Sponsored Links sections — off to the side or highlighted in another color. That is pretty much the only way that this is acceptable. Some may say that this is evidence of Google "jumping the shark", but I think that’s going a bit too far. What it is, is Google fighting against an ever-more-aggressive Microsoft, who were trying to kick Google out of the AOL game. Maybe Google just had to do what Google had to do.