This past week, Google and Comcast entered into talks with Time Warner to purchase a piece of its internet service provider, AOL. This move is a defensive maneuver meant to block rivals Yahoo! and Microsoft from purchasing this failing piece of real estate.
AOL is a victim of its own failure to adapt. A dinosaur in the ISP market, AOL has been losing customers by the millions to lower priced, faster providers.
Why would Google want a piece of AOL? The answer to that is quite simple: So Yahoo! and Microsoft can’t.
Google is #1 in search. Yahoo! is #1 in e-mail. AOL is #1 in Instant Messaging. By acquiring AOL’s #1 IM software, the winning bidder would ensure that they create a huge strong hold on the competition to being the company that serves as the portal to the internet.
A Google/Comcast/AOL combination would be great. Not only would you have the high speed internet service of Comcast partnered with the powerful search engine capabilities of Google, but also all of AOL’s IM and entertainment services … something neither Comcast nor Google can offer at this point. As a Google fanatic, I cannot wait to see where this goes. It would be great to have my Google Talk software sync with my AIM, my Google search find me great concerts and movies, all brought to me faster than anywhere else.
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