
About the AOL announcement (2005) - handpickednames
https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/12/about-aol-announcement.html
======
ninedays
> _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._

How times have changed.

[https://mashable.com/2012/08/28/google-homepage-
ad](https://mashable.com/2012/08/28/google-homepage-ad)

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/24/google-
br...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/24/google-breaks-
promise-banner-ads-search-results)

~~~
benhoyt
To be fair, there aren't "banner ads" on either the Google homepage or the
search results pages. Neither are there "crazy, flashy, graphical doodads
flying and popping up". There are definitely ads on the search results pages,
and they take too much vertical space IMO, but they're text and small images,
not flashing and tacky stuff.

~~~
gcb0
completely depends on your definition of "crazy". I mean Google used to show
ads for a particular drug if you searched for suicide methods that would call
for such drug.... that's pretty crazy in my book.

also most of the deal was about video ads. just take a look at YouTube.

------
currysausage
_Google to Invest $1 Billion for a 5% Stake in AOL

Companies to Collaborate on Online Video Offering and Make More AOL Content
Available to Google Users_

([http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2005/12/time-warners-aol-
and...](http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2005/12/time-warners-aol-and-google-
to-expand_20.html))

Wow, I really didn’t remember!

~~~
jobigoud
At that time Google Video was a decent alternative to Youtube.

------
handpickednames
Google SERP with banner ads (2019):
[https://twitter.com/glenngabe/status/1098939747018461184](https://twitter.com/glenngabe/status/1098939747018461184)

------
rekshaw
I was more surprised with how archaic the word "webmaster" sounds today.

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NelsonMinar
Note this is the 2005 deal. The 2002 ad deal with AOL is probably the single
moment that defined the business success of Google, the moment when the
AdWords product took off and became the unstoppable juggernaut. I'm still
impressed with Google's executive team, particularly Salar, that the deal
worked even better than we could have hoped.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/02/business/technology-
aol-s...](https://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/02/business/technology-aol-shifts-
key-contract-to-google.html)

------
robk
This was important at the time. AOL's ad inventory converted VERY well and it
was very strategic to keep it out of the hands of Microsoft/Bing and Yahoo,
both of whom were serious competitors (on hindsight this was where they were
actually beginning to diverge and hit their maxima). In the two sided ads
marketplace this was critical to have the most and the highest-quality
inventory to bring more network effects w/ advertisers getting good results.
The investment was terrible but I suppose they just wrote it down as a $1b fee
to keep Yahoo off of AOL.

~~~
bmurray7jhu
Google sold back it's 5% stake in 2009 for $283.0 million.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/technology/companies/28ao...](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/technology/companies/28aol.html)

------
chasing
"Our goal is to organize all of the world's information."

Funny how this seems much creepier in 2019 than it did in 2005...

~~~
jlarocco
Yeah. In 2005 I had no idea they meant "personal information".

Although in 2005 maybe they hadn't even realized yet.

~~~
endofcapital
They didn't have any clue. Back in 2005 personal data and access logs and
analytics was considered a chore, you'd delegate the annoyance of log rotation
to some sys admin or helpdesk intern and generally purge all data as quickly
as possible because storage was expensive.

Occasionally someone would make a cool tool that parsed htaccess logs and gave
you a neat visualization or something, but that was it. Literally nobody
tracked anything on the internet.

It almost seems like fiction when I type it out now.

------
londons_explore
The writing style is really different in Google blog posts today.

It really shows how the blog post passing through PR, legal, etc. review makes
it bland and almost meaningless.

