In a huge coup, Google, Silicon Valley's latest star start-up, announced
America Online has chosen Google as its primary Internet search engine. Google
is replacing Overture Services, formerly known as GoTo, for "paid
listings" services, a form of online advertising, in which companies pay to
be included in search results. AOL will also use Google for its general Internet
search service, replacing Inktomi.
Google began as a research project at Stanford University before it raised
venture capital in 1999. Until recently, Google focused exclusively on building
an Internet search engine that crawled the entire Web, and has long been the
undisputed leader in Internet searches, relying mostly on word of mouth to build
its user base.
But its recent move into paid searches has also been successful. Earlier this
year, the Internet service provider EarthLink dropped Overture and signed up
with Google. Google likely won the AOL deal by packaging its Internet search
product with its "paid search" service. Google's popular Internet
search engine is a huge selling point for the company, giving it a lot of
negotiating power in selling secondary services. This could hurt Overture as it
continues to compete with Google.
Sergey Brin, Google's president of technology, said Google will continue to
pursue more partnerships in paid search, and would likely pursue more package
deals selling Internet search and paid search together. "We absolutely want
both our search services and our sponsored links to be on as many sites as
possible."
Last month, Overture sued Google alleging it infringed its patent for paid
search. Google maintains it designed its own technology in-house.