AOHell lives up to its name (again)

[Admiral Michael]

You can always make your own "google" and then adblock the rest.

http://www.michaelsoft.gotdns.com/home/index.asp?color=black

 

[madmatt]

I agree with ming, well said.

 

[Grandmaster]

You can always make your own "google" and then adblock the rest.

http://www.michaelsoft.gotdns.com/home/index.asp?color=black

I was aware of that, and other people were too. Not that it's bad thing that you pointed it out, but most people like us who are more technically savvy than Average Joe know about Adblock

It's more of a problem of principles. I guess at the end of the day Google did what most (or all) other businesses would do.

 

[madmatt]

Obviously Microsoft wouldn't make a deal on those terms.

 

[Son Goku]

Somehow, I could not imagine Microsoft agreeing to putting AO-Hell icons all over Windows, and then agreeing to remove all of their own MSN icons to give room and allow AO-Hell that feeling of exclusivity

Course I don't know what AOL was after, but can only imagine... Other things that might not sit well would be replacing some Microsoft bundled software with AO-Hell equivalents as Windows Vista gets shipped out...

 

[Admiral Michael]

It's more of a problem of principles. I guess at the end of the day Google did what most (or all) other businesses would do.

I know. I think it's a bad move! I love google since it's a simple page to load and thus faster.

 

[X-Istence]

I seriously doubt Google will start distributing AOL icons with it's programs, if it does it loses it's entire userbase almost instantly. This is a gaurantee.

As for the advertising over the main, shame, but it was coming. They allow graphical ads on their adsense network, it makes sense for them to then sometime in the future allow it on their own pages.

Eventhough I think it is a bad move by Google, I will wait and see this one out. I won't jump to conclusions just yet. As for people thinking the stock price would tank, that was false.

It has been going up for a while now. T'was 390 a few weeks ago, now it is 432, with the highest point having been 446. I have to say that the Google stock is doing pretty well.

Also, most of the rumors, or things that are supposedly from people close to the deal are blown out of proportion so badly, that it does not make sense to even follow them.

Wait and see ....
Wait and see ....

I will.

 

[Johnny]

Somehow, I could not imagine Microsoft agreeing to putting AO-Hell icons all over Windows, and then agreeing to remove all of their own MSN icons to give room and allow AO-Hell that feeling of exclusivity

Course I don't know what AOL was after, but can only imagine... Other things that might not sit well would be replacing some Microsoft bundled software with AO-Hell equivalents as Windows Vista gets shipped out...

AOL probably wanted them to imbed their software into the next widows version. I'm going to wait and see what happens with this before I make any more conclusions.

@X-Istence - Time Warner stock was the same way. Soon after it took a nose dive ..

 

[Mastershakes]

The deal went through, MS was shut out.

 

[Johnny]

I kinda like them making google talk available to talk to aim contacts. AOL is still a POS though. I will never find favor with them. And I agree with Icahn when he said it will be disasterous. It looks like google is trying to do to search engines what M$ has done with the pc .. I look for antitrust suits, etc here soon if this keeps up ..

 

[X-Istence]

@X-Istence - Time Warner stock was the same way. Soon after it took a nose dive ..

Still going strong.

 

[Johnny]

Still going strong.

It has gone up since then. But none the less, there is a reason Time Warner took AOL out of their name

 

[X-Istence]

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/12/about-aol-announcement.html

Some more about the AOL announcement, straight from Google.

 

[Son Goku]

Keep in mind that was also written by the PR monkeys working for the respective company; and might have no bearing on the final reality. The results they provide quite well could end up biased wrt page rankings and the like; especially if AO-Hell is looking for a means to increase their advertizing dollars.

Google also, has not always put the most relavent pages at the front of the search, as arguments about blog or opinion pages (due to high hit counts) sometimes comming up at the top of the list, above some relavent news stories on the same given subject.

Also, whereas Google has in the past proven good for some searches; there are other areas where I've given up using it, as I get what I don't want no matter how explicit I put the request... It has all (and without this new development) depended on what one was searching for...

Whatever the truth might turn out to be; press releases and the like should tend to be taken with a grain of salt because 1. they aren't really written by an objective third party, and 2. the author (the companies PR dept) has a vested interest in the public maintaining a certain "view of them" (aka vested interest in their given public image). PR people aren't always 100% honest, though many times they can be subtle enough in the use of the English language so as to say something that is either *technically correct, but misleading*, else in some way not entirely truthful, without blatantly lieing in the most obvious manner...

 

[muzikool]

Some more news. Slightly good, slightly bad. More good than bad I guess.

Google is promising to keep its home page uncluttered and banner-free and its search results and keyword ad auction unbiased, despite paying $1 billion for a 5 percent stake in Time Warner's Internet unit last week.

Instead, people may see small graphical ads on Google's home and search results pages and banner ads on video and image pages, more exposure to Google's Web crawler for America Online sites, prominent links on Google Video to AOL video content and lots of chat between the popular AOL Instant Messenger program and the nascent Google Talk.

The change for users "will be very slight, especially from the core Google experience," Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience, said in an interview with CNET News.com.

"There is a lot of fear that there will be banner ads now on the Google home page. We are not considering that at all," she said. "There is concern about biased search results and we are not doing that."

Accompanying existing text ads on the Google home page and search results pages, there may eventually be "small graphical elements"--smaller than thumbnail images--from AOL or other advertisers, Mayer said in the interview. Meanwhile, banner or display ads could appear on Google's video and image search sites, she said.

"There will be no banner ads on the Google home page or Web search results pages," she wrote in a Dec. 22 posting on the Official Google Blog. "There will not be crazy, flashy, graphical doodads flying and popping up all over the Google site. Ever."

Ever. Let's hope so.