Microsoft May Need To Outbid Google For AOL
from the ah,-the-auction-process dept
You can be sure of one thing: Google understand how bidding works. That's how they make most of their money, watching advertisers try to outbid each other to get better placement. It appears that Google, with the help of Comcast, may be looking to drive up the price that Microsoft would need to pay if it wanted to buy a part of AOL. Google and Comcast are apparently teaming up to make their own bid for a piece of the company. It's clearly in Google's best interest, seeing how about 12% of their revenue currently comes from AOL, and that would likely go away soon after Microsoft took over. Still, Google is probably a bit wary of actually getting involved with the struggling company, so it's probably a case where they figure the least they can do is drive up however much Microsoft needs to pay -- and if Google ends up with a piece of AOL in the process, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Of course, remember that Google's ad bidding process also throws in an element of "relevance." Can they convince AOL that they might be a better partner than Microsoft even at a lower price by being more relevant?
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Microsoft vs. Google for AOL
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Microsoft vs. Google for AOL
On the other hand though, I think that having Google win would be beneficial as well, seeing as I am a proud Google, Gmail, Gtalk, user. Combining their elements together would be very It would be nice in the sense that Google's elements would be weaved in the AOL program and others such as AIM.
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Re: Microsoft vs. Google for AOL
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Microsoft / Google / AOL / Comcast
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impatient people rule!
See all the other comments on this site? Yeah, that means the posting works FINE. Just because it doesn't show up right away, doesn't mean it isn't going to eventually.
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Re: impatient people rule!
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Re: Microsoft vs. Google for AOL
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Re: Microsoft vs. Google for AOL
AOL has pumped a lot of money into various "open" software efforts over the years, keeping Netscape, Winamp, Shoutcast among others, funded as a customer, or by acquiring the remains of these efforts when nobody else was interested. I stopped using ICQ when they acquired that, thinking they would ruin it. They didn't, however after jumping from one IM to another over the years I find that AIM suits me just fine and apparently I'm not alone in this. I use the built-in iChat client on my Apple machine, and I use Gaim under Linux, so essentially AOL has been providing me with a free service for a couple of years now and I've never paid them a dime or even viewed an ad to pay for the service indirectly.
Beyond that, it seems to be an industry secret (I haven't seen it reported ANYWHERE!) that AOL is quietly re-inventing itself mostly through the AIM namespace. Since I've never been an AOL customer, I am only known to them via the free AIM id I signed up for several years ago. At the time it was linked with what was left of the Netscape organization with a fairly useless free e-mail id. These days, you can get a free AIM branded e-mail address that comes with (hold on to your seats):
2Gig of storage, and IMAP client interface, and AJAX interface with the look of Outlook, complete with drag and drop folder actions. NOBODY else has this, and nobody seems to be talking about it, which shows how dependent our tech press is on formal press releases to actually know what is going on (they don't actually experiment with the tech on their own).
Oh, did I mention they have a blogging service that already rivals MSN's (OK that's not saying much). You can load up to 98 meg of stuff onto a personal web page (I don't know how they arrived at that particular limit), do photo albums, schedule recurring tasks, generate automated e-mails, although there seems to be no formal calendar yet, and probably a few other things that I haven't discovered. If you have the right cell phone, which I don't, you can apparently use AIM from that too. All of this is free (although I can't test the cell phone bit) and can be used on Linux, OS X, and of course Windows.
AOL has long been platform agnostic, although they get dragged kicking and screaming into helping Microsoft lock users in to Windows on a regular basis. The recent kiss-and-make-up between Microsoft and Real I think underscores how desperate Microsoft is getting for friends. The existence of Google coupled with Microsoft's long reputation of screwing over anything that moves into its field of vision, I think has finally started working seriously against the big company and in favor of all the screwees. Google may have squashed the online Office-killer rumors for now, but gradually more and more of what we do with computers is online and offers no particular advantage, and in some cases a major disadvantage, to the Windows user. The technology set-back that clueless user's infatuation with Windows has caused for the past 10 years is finally coming to and end and we may see that some old dinosaurs like AOL and IBM (just to name two) have a lot more upside potential than anyone ever thought (particularly the "tech analysts").
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M$ is asking too much....
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Re: M$ is asking too much....
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Re: M$ is asking too much....
They would use there time alot more wisely with improving services like gtalk.
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Re: Impatient People Need to Get a REAL JOB??
What These Folks Don't REALIZE is their Statements need to go to the servers and get ANNALIZED and then Finally Sent Back to the Place Where they Belong___which is Here So Everyone Can Read Them. With This All Said and DONE____Take a DEEP BREATH AND CHECK SOME MORE EMAILS___While Your Statements are Making Their Way Back to the Site____OK ! !! Be Patient__You Will Live LONGER____PEACE
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Re: M$ is asking too much....
Open GL, QT, GTK (just to name a few) write your code for those API's and it's just a matter of recompiling per platform.
If you're all about vendor lock in, and proprietary software, by all means continue supporting Microsoft.
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Re: Impatient People Need to Get a REAL JOB??
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wow
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Re: impatient people rule!
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Re: Microsoft vs. Google for AOL
You are saying Mozilla and Gent? what? is bigger than Microsoft? In your dreams at night maybe.
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Re: M$ is asking too much....
>Open GL, QT, GTK (just to name a few) write your code for those API's and it's just a matter of recompiling per platform.
>If you're all about vendor lock in, and proprietary software, by all means continue supporting Microsoft.
I will continue supporting Microsoft because that is what the Pros do. Trying to be the coolest person on the block using NEW and IMMATURE technologies that dont even TRY to integrate everything together like Microsoft does would make me look unprofessional. Every client of mine has made the choice to go Microsoft because I recommended it and it has always provided all the benefits I said it would because the Windows platform IS a defacto standard that can be depended on... All you nut jobs saying untrue crap like "because I am too dense to setup Windows correctly even though it is EXTREMELY easy, Windows crashes all the time." Sounds as genuine as the religious people trying to say the Intelligent Design is science...heh I just laugh at you people everyday. Try using this wonderful sight called GOOGLE and lookup facts about Microsoft before giving your uninformed opinions... Opinions are like assholes ... everyone has one and they all stink.
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Re: impatient people rule!
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Google for the Win!!
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Re: Microsoft vs. Google for AOL
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Re: Microsoft vs. Google for AOL
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Re: M$ is asking too much....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_toolkit
Hell if you want to, you can purchase a license to protect you're precious IP.
I use Microsoft crap daily, I'm an assistant IT at our company, and no matter how correctly you configure a Microsoft computer you'll have random bugs on some machines. Does this make Linux better? of course not, it has wierd issues in various distros as well. The thing is once you learn Linux you can fix most of the hard bugs EASIER than digging through the pain in the ass that the registry is.
while you're at it, why don't you not insult the person you're debating with, it might possibly make you look more intelligent.
> Opinions are like assholes ... everyone has one and they all stink.
It's a funny thing about opinions. They're fine until it goes up against you're dogma. And using a windows API is dogma. Using proprietary junk instead of PROVEN open formats *COUGH* HTML (Until Microsoft F***ED it up). Wouldn't you rather have all of you're documents stored in an OPEN format, that doesn't lock you in to a particular vendor?
Apple is just as guilty as Microsoft when it comes to this locking customers into the iPod with the format of songs you get on iTunes.
>Try using this wonderful sight called GOOGLE
Speaking of the wonderful "site" (sight is related to vision not the web), you do know they run they're servers on Linux right? You do know they are Microsoft's #1 competition right now?
>Windows correctly even though it is EXTREMELY easy
Really, so windows has NEVER crashed on you, NEVER had a program or application lock up on you?
I don't believe it. While 2K and up have better memory protection from app crashes, they're are still ocassions a crappy app can bring down you're whole system. and usually that crappy app is made by microsoft.
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Re: Microsoft vs. Google for AOL
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Re: Microsoft vs. Google for AOL
Your an idiot!
I would personally rather google take over AOL, though it is unlikely. If google took over, it would be likely that more of aol's software would become open source (Winamp, etc), and for the whole "weaving" aol into windows, its possible to have aol interact witht eh OS more than it already does without M$ owning it!
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Re: Microsoft vs. Google for AOL
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Re: M$ is asking too much....
Sure, for the casual user windows is easier, but for the professional user/corperation linux is the way to go. Windows costs too much to license and has too many security holes.
Now, I ask you to go on "this wonderful sight(site?) called GOOGLE" and search for "Microsoft IIS Security vulnerabilities"
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Re: M$ is asking too much....
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you are almost famous
Thank you
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Re: impatient people rule!
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Re: Microsoft vs. Google for AOL
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1997/Jun97/ComcasPR.mspx
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