Speculation over the AOL/Google Deal

Recently it has been reported that Google is going to pay AOL 1 billion dollars for a 5% stake in the company.

“The deal would help Google sell more of the display ads that run on some of the Web sites affiliated with Google. AOL’s big sales staff would begin selling such display ads for an unspecified number of Web publishers that have outsourced at least part of their ad sales to Google.

In turn, Google, whose technology powers the AOL search engine, would allow AOL to directly sell search ads, which appear when users type key words in queries or when the words appear in the texts of Web sites.”

Google also would promote AOL’s Web properties. What the article doesn’t mention much of what Google will be getting out of the deal. Sure it talks about ads, but there could be a bigger picture here.

Google has the toolbar, an investment in the Mozilla Firefox browser, and the Google Talk messaging service. Why would product tie-ins be out of the question? Also, lately I have been checking out AOL Beta Central and they have been working on some interesting projects to make it easy to fix or secure your computer. They have that new version of AIM which looks impressive and elegant, and they even have a Firefox Toolbar Beta.

AOL has become a powerhouse of synergy, making a business out of leveraging their properties. This is something Google can learn from.