http://learn2adapt.com/blog/2008/04/10/is-aol-only-worth-1225-billion/ Occasional prattle on life and learning in the 21st century Fri, 24 Jul 2009 02:10:54 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 http://learn2adapt.com/blog/2008/04/10/is-aol-only-worth-1225-billion/comment-page-1/#comment-70 Francis Wong Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:25:52 +0000 http://learn2adapt.com/blog/2008/04/10/is-aol-only-worth-1225-billion/#comment-70 I think #1 explains the inflated price "Google paid too much for its 5% stake in 2005". But they paid too much on purpose. At that time, Google's search dominance wasn't complete yet. Microsoft was making aggressive pushes with their search. And Yahoo was still considered a serious threat to Google. So part of the 5% price bought a strategic alliance so AOL would use Google search technology, cross-share their ads/content and cooperate on areas such as video search. And that 5% also helped to keep AOL from being completely crushed. Since the investment, Google has made no aggressive moves directly against AOL that I can think of. It's the technological equivalent of a peace treaty. I think #1 explains the inflated price “Google paid too much for its 5% stake in 2005″. But they paid too much on purpose. At that time, Google’s search dominance wasn’t complete yet. Microsoft was making aggressive pushes with their search. And Yahoo was still considered a serious threat to Google. So part of the 5% price bought a strategic alliance so AOL would use Google search technology, cross-share their ads/content and cooperate on areas such as video search. And that 5% also helped to keep AOL from being completely crushed. Since the investment, Google has made no aggressive moves directly against AOL that I can think of. It’s the technological equivalent of a peace treaty.

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