Editor’s note: This article was first published in October 2010 as news. The AOL bid for Yahoo it describes did not go ahead; Verizon later bought AOL (2015) and Yahoo’s operating business (2017) and combined them. Yahoo as the second most-used search engine, the 5% share rise and “more than 90% of traffic from Google” are 2010 figures.
AOL is becoming daily news in the Wall Street Journal. It has taken its role as an internet giant seriously and has set its sights on catching up with Google. Not long ago we heard about its acquisition of TechCrunch, a very well-positioned US blog network. The price wasn’t disclosed, although it was estimated at around 35 million dollars. Now AOL, together with several private equity firms, is preparing a bid to take control of the second most-used search engine, Yahoo.
For now, the news has pushed Yahoo’s share price up 5%. There is talk of a possible merger, and if no agreement is reached, AOL would launch a takeover bid. The goal, without a doubt, is to win Google’s market and knock it off its perch.
It’s worth remembering that in Yahoo’s early days, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google and creators of the world’s most-used search engine, offered to sell the idea of Google to AOL when it was just that, an idea. At the time, AOL and other major internet brands argued that search engines weren’t a profitable business. Yet it’s plain to see that today there is a war for control of search and of the lucrative online advertising business, currently monopolized by Google.
Personal opinion: The market Google has won and the sophistication of its page-indexing system will be very hard to beat, no matter how many acquisitions big companies make. Among today’s three search engines, Google, Bing (Microsoft) and Yahoo, anyone who runs a website could tell you that more than 90% of their traffic comes from Google.
That said, some people are already talking about an internet bubble, which is why Google itself is diversifying: it is currently moving into renewable energy and, as we discussed, designing the car of the future.
For now, Google is leading the race for a specific market and so far it’s coming out on top, even though all of its competitors are joining forces to end its dominance. I think Google has a long time left on the podium, because you have to admit that its capacity and indexing system are still light years ahead of its two closest rivals.
Further reading
- Google designs a car that needs no driver
- Could Twitter and Facebook take over Google’s search market?
- Google TV and the merger of the internet and television
Featured image: Scott Schiller, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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