Google and AOL: It's all good people…
People went nuts talking about Google jumping the shark because of the AOL deal, and today Google tells everyone to just chill.
For the record: Google and AOL are filled with really smart folks… everyone undersands the dynamics of why Google search works so well and why people love it: trust. NO ONE is going to do anything to compromise the trust that people have in Google’s results. Not AOL, not Google–no one.
Here are the main points of the deal as outlined at the Google Blog.
- There is be no biased results (well duh?!?!!?). I don’t get how John Battelle–who knows Google so well–would ever think they would do this? Come on John, you really think Google would throw their entire business away? It just doesn’t add up–I don’t care how big of swing vote AOL is.
- Google is going to help AOL get it’s content indexed. This is a big deal… if you do search results how often do you see wikipedia, Engadget, DIGG, and Technorati tag pages? How often do you see AOL pages? Exactly.
- AOL is getting an advertising credit. (I’m very excited about this one!)
- AOL is getting onebox placement — [ To see onebox Google says: Try searching on [new york transit strike] and look for the news section. ]
- Google confirms banner ads are not coming. Google says: There will be no banner ads on the Google homepage or web search results pages. There will not be crazy, flashy, graphical doodads flying and popping up all over the Google site. Ever.
