By on September 2, 2010

AOL Renews with Google, but Nearly Ordered Chinese

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Is anyone surprised that AOL renewed its search deal with Google?

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong was one of the executives that negotiated the deal the first time around–albeit while “playing” for Google at the time.

So, with AOL about as competitive as Yahoo in the search space, Google the incumbent provider, and Armstrong’s connections, it made a lot of sense to just push this one through quickly, so that AOL can focus on its new content provider goals.

Interestingly, although Microsoft was the other serious option for AOL, the company was rumored to have considered partnering with Yahoo. Er, doesn’t Yahoo get its results from Bing now? Maybe someone forgot to tell Yahoo that its not a real search engine anymore. Even more bizarre? China’s Baidu was in the running!

Baidu!

I can see how that would have worked out just fabulously! :-P


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5 comments on “AOL Renews with Google, but Nearly Ordered Chinese”

  1. Frank Reed Says:

    September 2nd, 2010 at 10:50 am

    Baidu – really? I wonder if there are Chinese content farms that Aol. had their eyes on as well?

    Andy Beal Reply:
    September 2nd, 2010 at 11:02 am

    Ouch! ;-)

  2. zqjilove Says:

    September 2nd, 2010 at 12:06 pm

    Baidu World Congress today, in the past year, Baidu has a very large box to calculate the changes, many features are not implemented in Google…

  3. Go2Mach2 Says:

    September 2nd, 2010 at 1:41 pm

    Thanks Andy…

    Sometimes “no brainer” decisions still exist in the world. For AOL, this was one of them. For some strange reason – that even I don’t understand – I am often drawn to AOL. I think I would have changed if google was no longer enhancing their results…Thanks again

  4. Bookbook Says:

    September 8th, 2010 at 3:36 am

    好看！呵呵