AOL to Drop Google...

I see at WW http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum97/612.htm they taking about this but I think they missed some key points, in that AOL and Microsoft have had a search agreement for several years and this agreement simply is going to be expanded.

We personally know that AOL and and Google have had problems in agreement on Advertising positioning and Microsoft's new AdCenter is looking very attractive to AOL.

AOL and Microsoft are two very "corporate" players, unlike Google they are in the game to make money while giving the users something back, both AOL and Microsoft understand and live off "forcing" users to use their systems, plus lets look at it.

Google has provided AOL with search results and advertising, that's it, Microsoft provides technology, AOL has a search contact with Microsoft and Google doesn't allow AOL to run ads on parts of their system, not to mention the reach that AOL users have and the amount of exposure and successful web products under AOL and Microsoft's interest can be clearly understood.

Also add to this that AOL has there own PPC advertising system, just it never took off in the same way as Google/Overture did, but that's due to branding and usage.

Looking at it on paper in the US on a user level AOL might just have more users then Google, I'd personally say they do, but its hard to do the math as AOL owns so much more then Google... come to think of it, why is AOL using Google at all...

I've heard from a few sources connected to
AOL that their subscriber number is much overstated-
about 30-40% of the real number of users.

could be so, but AOL owns so much, we even realized that AOL powers part of Google the directory, wonder if Google would keep the directory if AOL dropped them?