AOL — Google: The Search For Meaning

(Corrected links) As far as we know, Time Warner is still in exclusive discussions witn Google over a deal that includes a $1 billion payment for 5 percent of AOL. That doesn’t ensure the much ballyhooed deal currently being deconstructed will happen — the Time Warner board still has to approve the agreement, for one, and some of the details being leaked sound like trial balloons. (Saul Hansell reminds us that in 1996, AOL changed its mind on a non-binding agreement and went with Microsoft’s IE as a browser.)
Speaking of details, a Microsoft source told the Seattle Times an equity play was never part of its offer: That wasn’t the play that we made. We approached this thing from a long-term, very broad perspective and from the looks of it, the deal they went with is more of a short-term, cash-infusion kind of a thing.” That smoke you’re smelling right now is a bridge being singed. The NY Times says AOL turned an MSFT joint venture down because the accounting would have cause a reported-profit decline.
In the interim, we’ll join the search for meaning.

John Battelle I: “If this is true, AOL will once again be the ramp over which a major company jumps the shark.”

John Battelle II: “Will AOL be taken public? My conversations with AOL execs lead me to believe the answer is yes, as long as the numbers look good. This Google deal takes care of that….and why would Google invest in a subsidiary of Time Warner, unless they were promised some kind of liquidity event?”

Susan Mernit: “… in a year, we’ll be watching a very different Google–one that may have morphed into something alot more like AOL was back in the day, when they were fat and sassy and thought no one cared about search.”

Rob Hof: “Even after trolling through the massive coverage through memeorandum, something doesn’t feel right. ”

Charlene Li: “It brings up tremendous conflict of interest issues – is that AOL Madonna video in the search results because it’s the most relevant result or because it’s part of the AOL deal?”

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