Google had a big day today (December 17, 2005) in acquiring 5 percent of AOL for $1 billion as reported by David Vise of WashingtonPost.com and Saul Hansell of the New York Times. The deal calls for advertisement sharing between the two companies. The most notable advertisements will be ads on Google search results that will display an AOL logo. Google has been the search provider for AOL for years but MSN was reportedly courting AOL to upend Google in the AOL search space. Today's move by Google will most likely solidify Google as the continued search provider and also could help Google leverage AOL to get into some of Microsoft's precious software business.
Is this a good move for Google?
For some blogosphere perspectives check out these posts on Philoneist, Dave Henderson's Blog and Basement.org.
