IP Democracy: More Google-AOL Observations

Time Warner and Google gave the press and the blogosphere a lot to chew on over the holiday break with the official announcement of their pact. And, I must say, I haven’t seen quite as much diversity of opinion on a media deal for a long time. Depending on who you read, this is a good/bad deal for Google or this will change everything/will change nothing. More interesting is the speculation about what the most dynamic parts of the deal are. Some commentators have zeroed in on the interoperability of the two companies’ IM platforms.

Ben Charny at Media Week writes:

The new IM partnership takes on significance because of who AOL did not partner with, namely Yahoo Inc. or Microsoft’s MSN, the two other top IM makers.

Charny thinks the pact with Google is a clear signal that AOL couldn’t work with Yahoo or Microsoft on IM.

Om Malik says that the advertising components of the deal have been overplayed and that the real fall-out will be a stronger Google Voice, due to the IM interoperability between AOL and Google.

For Google’s GTalk, this is a big boost, something it needed desperately in order to increase traction when compared to Microsoft and Yahoo. The IM alliance between Google-AOL is a good way to combat Microsoft-Yahoo IM combo.

Om also flyspecks something that few observers have highlighted: the implications of the alliance for web-based video. There can be little doubt that Google is headed toward video — whether via video advertising, as Om notes, referencing our report last week, or via Google Video.

They [Google] have been fighting an uphill battle to find a toehold in Hollywood, and well there is no one more old school Beverly Hills than Time Warner. I think this will be the thing that helps the company get some traction for its Google Video business.

Interestingly, Google’s official blog has been silent on the deal, a relative surprise given that Google has been one of the most forthcoming contributors to the corporate blogosphere. But, it’s not all that surprising because Google has to take great care in how it explains what it means by its agreement to make AOL content “more accessible” to Google’s search engine, and I suspect the explanation is going to be rather complex. Google has to defend its objectivity while explaining how this aspect of the deal doesn’t corrupt Google’s “pure” search results.

The Search author John Battelle, Mr. Google himself, has put more than a little pressure on Google in this regard. Battelle writes:

I await clarification of how exactly this will effect paid results and inclusion of AOL content, but the counterspin from Google has been quite strong that results will not be affected. I buy that entirely as it relates to organic SERPS [search engine result pages], but I have yet to confirm the same is true of the auction or the one box.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on December 21, 2005 4:18 PM to IP Democracy