Yahoo Became AOL, Now AOL Is Becoming Yahoo
October 1, 2010
Neither Yahoo nor AOL strike me as companies with a strong commitment to search. In fact, Yahoo worked hard to become a “free” version of AOL. The company acquired lots of promising outfits and then allowed these to coast along. Yahoo ran into a problem of integrating the different services. A notable example was Flickr and Yahoo Photos. Eventually the two service became Flickr, but the task was time consuming. In fact, a heterogeneous infrastructure coupled with acquisitions that operated as standalone properties contributed to the shift at Yahoo. A shift that is still underway.
AOL, on the other, sort of wobbled along. The big change came with hiring a manager from Google (could this be an oxymoron?) and becoming a separate company. In the last few days, there’s been quite a bit of activity at AOL, mostly related to acquisitions that deliver content. If AOL can integrate its new purchases – a popular blog and conference property TechCrunch and 5min Media (a company with a couple of hundred thousand videos), AOL will become more like today’s Yahoo.
Can AOL become a content company that generates sufficient revenue to fly high again? Would a union of AOL and Yahoo make sense to some deal starved investment firm? What happens if Facebook buys one of these outfits, a suggestion when I first heard struck me as a wild and crazy idea?
This is not a good or a bad thing. I find it fascinating that two established online companies seem to be doppelgängers. Yes, that includes search.
Stephen E Arnold, October 1, 2010
Freebie
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