AOHell lives up to its name (again)

[muzikool]

From The New York Times Online:

AOL gets Google to try busier ads

Users of Google's search engine will soon see something they are not used to on the notoriously spare site: advertising with logos and graphics.

And the advertisers will not be limited to America Online, whose talks with Google prompted the change in policy, according to two executives close to the companies' negotiations.

As part of their deal, which is expected to be announced this afternoon, Google is providing AOL with $300 million in advertising on Google's Web sites, intended to use to draw Google search users to related content on AOL's sites, the executives said. That sum is on top of the $1 billion in cash that Google is to invest to buy a 5 percent stake in AOL.

Representatives of Google and AOL said their companies would not comment on any aspect of the negotiations. Google, which has been providing search technology and placing search-based advertising on AOL since 2002, emerged Friday with a tentative deal to renew and expand that relationship, fending off a challenge from Microsoft.

The executives close to the talks said that at AOL's request, Google would begin to test various forms of graphical ads and that it would make the same formats available to other advertisers. Google has started to sell graphical ads for placement on other sites; plans to do so on Google itself were accelerated by the AOL talks, an executive involved in the negotiations said.

Full Article

 

[Johnny]

I will quit using google all together. Next they will have pop ups and phishing programs .. Looks like http://www.alltheweb.com might become my new start page. Aol always has a way of ruining something. I personally think this will hurt google more than it will help them. Aol is practically out of of business, I don't see why google would want to do this for that reason. Even if it is to fend off M$.

Look for google to stock to drop from this .. It will bite them in the butt big time .. The main reason they are one of the most popular search engines is because they don't have the stupid add dispays and other junk that comes with the other search engines .. They need to learn the adege: "If it's not broke, DON'T FIX IT !!!!!" ... GRRRRR - I hate AOHELL >>

 

[mooo]

so its going to look like yahoo soon GREAT!! Why do companies do this, google is well off now, doesn't need the extra cash i don't think for the ad's.

 

[Sazar]

Google investing in AOL?

Does no one remember how the last investment in AOL turned out

 

[Grandmaster]

Wow. Google just lost so much of my respect. I can't believe it.

 

[Son Goku]

It's a pipe dream, but I wish America Offline would die a slow and painful death...

//rant mode on
My last dealings with that virus of the Internet was when they acquired CompuServe. I used to be a CompuServe customer from back in the day; well before the web became a main way of accessing it... They said they'd leave the service alone; but AO-Hell can't keep their greasy paws outa things; just too tempting.

About a year after the companies merged; I started getting every single fricken billing problem that AO-Hell customers had been complaining about for years. It culminated in them trying to double bill me; and then because I only had the money in my checking account to pay the bill once all I'm contractually obligated to do, they suspended my service.

As turns out, they reversed the charges on the first billing to my card (their fault, not mine) so thought it would be cool to suspend service because my credit union hadn't payed them a second time, for the same bill, in a given month. And yes, the second billing attempt was made before they reversed charges for the payment they did receive. It was the first time I've ever had to go to the Better Business Beureu to get something resolved with a company in the past.

Sometime latter, the BBB contacted me to report AO-Hell has rebuffed their communications, and they're being put on file as a non-responsive company. Only then did they decide to do something about it, and sent a load of PR bull, in response to having been told by the BBB that this is how they were going to be recorded...

Latter I did cancel my service with them; but they thought it would be qute to continue trying to bill my check card. I ended up going down to the credit union, told them I closed the account down, and the CU filed out the forms to declare it as fraudulent charges against my card. They said they were reversing the charges for now, and would launch an investigation. If they found the charges to be legitimate, they'd be re-applied to my card, otherwise forget about it.

So, 1 year latter, the billing dept (which had before this already started, merged with the AO-Hell billing dept; to save from having 2 seperate staffs covering the same thing) decided to send me a letter complaining that my bank won't let them bill my card anymore. They were like "will you pay us..." To hell with that, I cancelled service. I'm under no obligation to continue paying for a service I no longer have. And the worst of it? I never signed up with them. They had a corporate merger with the company I had been a long time customer of at that point... This company has a special place in my heart, and it isn't for things I like...
//rant mode off

The executives close to the talks said that at AOL's request, Google would begin to test various forms of graphical ads and that it would make the same formats available to other advertisers. Google has started to sell graphical ads for placement on other sites; plans to do so on Google itself were accelerated by the AOL talks, an executive involved in the negotiations said.

If google turns into a AO-Hell spam fest, time to find another search engine I guess. Not sure how long it will take for AOL to destroy this as well...

 

[Mastershakes]

Ad-Blocker is turned on... /shakes continues using Google.

 

[madmatt]

I missed some thing. What happened with the Microsoft-AOL deal? Obviously it fell through, but when and why?

 

[muzikool]

Ad-Blocker is turned on... /shakes continues using Google.

You can avoid it, but it's the principal of the thing here. AOHell is cancer of the Internet.

 

[Mastershakes]

You can avoid it, but it's the principal of the thing here. AOHell is cancer of the Internet.

Agreed, all hell broke loose when they merged it with the internet in the mid 90s .... hehe

Will we ever recover?

 

[muzikool]

Agreed, all hell broke loose when they merged it with the internet in the mid 90s .... hehe

Will we ever recover?

Maybe when cancer itself is cured.

 

[mooo]

HEY!! I am sad to say i used aol to start with, BUT it taught me about 'mass mailers' and such so i can't complain + it got me into VB3,4 & 5.. I sitll don't knwo why anyone would use it today..

 

[Son Goku]

I can block most adds, between both Proxomitron and Donzilla which includes the ad block plugin for Firefox in Mozilla...

But the ads aren't the only question this brings up. But with this portion of the article

Yet as AOL's parent, Time Warner, was exploring potential deals with Google and Microsoft, it pressed Google for ways that Google users could be directed to AOL pages. AOL is trying to replace the declining profit from its dial-up subscription business with advertising revenue from free Web sites like AOL.com.

what will this do to the quality of our searches? Perhaps the pages that best meet the requirements for what we're looking for aren't to be found on the aohell.com domain. What then?

Web searches, already affected by blogs which might pose a high hit count and show up as favorable (I remember having read discussion of this in the past); could now get effected by the search engine being biased toward AOL pages. What if, in the name of acquiring additional page hits to their domain (which they can then use for increased advertizing dollars), they place this preference for sites on their own domain above what best meets the search request the user has entered in? This directing toward AOL pages, and just how far they'd go with this is what's got me a little concerned with where this search engine might be headed...

 

[NetRyder]

This was bound to happen. The whole deal was about one thing and one thing only - revenue. And since things can't just go one way, AOL was going to have its way in return for the additional revenue they're going to generate for Google.

The only thing that's left to be seen now is how far Google is willing to go for the $$$. Are we also going to start seeing "Get Free AOL Internet for 90 days" icons scattered all over the system when we install desktop apps like Picasa and Google Earth? I wouldn't be surprised. It's happened with a fair number of other apps before.

 

[madmatt]

Look at the newest version of AIM (Triton). Nice UI, but you have to install all that extra crap and it takes four processes to run it. I guarantee Google will now be packaging their products with AOL shortcuts (and favorites).

Even though I don't know what happened with the Microsoft-AOL deal I can certainly guess Microsoft wasn't willing to do this.

 

[ming]

heh... what a shame.. google and ipods never had my respect in the first place.

 

[muzikool]

heh... what a shame.. google and ipods never had my respect in the first place.

What on earth do iPods have to do with this? :ermm:

 

[Mastershakes]

Nothing, yet everything I guess LOL

 

[ming]

What on earth do iPods have to do with this? :ermm:

people get hyped up with both like it's a fashionable product that no one can live without and despise rival products.

 

[xsivforce]

Wow. Google just lost so much of my respect. I can't believe it.

My thoughts as well.