AOL to stick with Google

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About those ....."partnerships"

The Real Networks "partnership" is actually part of a settlement that involves MS paying Real 761M in cash and services, as well as promoting Rhapsody through the MSN brand. Real's part of the bargain is that they agreed to stay out of anti-trust investigations against MS by the E.U. and S. Korea.

The AT&T (AKA SBC of SBC Yahoo!) partnership is in fact a solid move on their part to shore up their IM/VoIP effort. Someone in Redmond deserves serious Kudos for inking this pair of deals - first you license your technology to an ISP (SBC), then you cut a deal that grants you access to their partner's (Yahoo!) install base allowing you to use your own technology. Very nice move.

As for AOL. Remember the days when there was an AOL distro with a desktop icon bundled with every Windows install? That deal soured at XP when MS wanted AOL to allow them access to their AIM customer base in exchange for bundling AIM with Windows OS's. AOL tried to counter by going to OEM's to get their software installed, but MS quickly put an end to that.

MS and Apple partnerships?....Someone should tell HP. Remember the short-lived HP branded iPods?

Now HD-DVD story is where things start getting weird. This is the DRM battle royal. Starting with a little Santa Clara based company called InterTrust who have been in litigation against MS since 01. More important than that, however, is the fact that InterTrust was jointly bought by Sony and Philips (read the Blu-Ray camp) for 453M in 02. After years of litigation, MS "agreed" to license InterTrust's IP surrounding DRM for 440M. Sweet deal for Sony and Philips -- sour grapes for MS.

As for AOL's value to any of the involved parties here.....one word, Mindshare. While the people posting here may see AOL as a remnant from a bygone era, the fact remains that they have some 24M subscribers. Something tells me that MS does not want to lose that many installs to say....Firefox.

As for Google's interest? Sure it may take them a few years to recoup the cost of the partnership, but AOL also has a huge content library of its own, not to mention potential access to Time/Warner's nice little collection.

Just trying to see the forest for the trees here.

Posted by: AMarking   Posted on: 12/17/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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