How Microsoft can 'kill' Google
Simple - just buy its customers
When Steve Ballmer yelled at a departing Microsoft employee that he would ?˘‚Ǩ?ěkill Google?˘‚Ǩ? we had no idea just how direct a method he had in mind. Buying all or part of AOL may be the first part of the master plan, as Google relies heavily on the advertising pages that come from Yahoo!, since it now syndicates its search to Google.
One estimate suggested that Google would lose as much as $380m of advertising revenue if AOL dropped its search engine and took on MSN’s. That would cut Google?˘‚Ǩ‚Ѣs profit by something like 25 per cent, potentially giving its huge share price something of a tumble. No wonder Google is thought to be entering the bidding to partner with Time Warner on AOL instead of Microsoft.
Full article: The Register
