Google Deal Not So Sweet for AOL

Google has taken some time to dispel concerns about its expanded partnership with AOL. With the clarifications, however, it now looks like the deal was not so sweet, with the only real positive for Time Warner's online unit being the $1 billion dollar investment by the search engine.

Google vice president of search Marissa Mayer posted the clarifications to the Google Blog on Thursday night. "The recent announcement of the AOL partnership has been the source of a lot of rumors and misconceptions. We'd like to clear some of those up," Mayer wrote.

In exchange for the investment, Google effectively closed out competitors -- something vocal company shareholder Carl Icahn publicly warned about -- and it now appears it gave AOL very little in return.

Google said that rumors of possible favoritism toward AOL-based sites in its results were untrue. Mayer said that business deals never affect search results, and if a site is listed high on a page, it is simply a better answer to the search query.

AOL's pages would also receive no special treatment in the way they are indexed, as Mayer said Google would work with the online service in the same way it does with other companies to help them catalog their pages properly.

Mayer also worked to clarify several points over the proposed advertising deal. She appeared to throw cold water on rumors that AOL had successfully pressured Google into using graphical ads on search engine result pages.

"There will not be crazy, flashy, graphical doodads flying and popping up all over the Google site. Ever," Mayer stressed.

Google would also not give AOL preferential treatment in Google's AdWords program, saying it did not do that for any of its other partners, and it would continue to advertise AOL in the "onebox" feature at the top of its pages as it had in the past.

But John Battelle, author of "The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture," questioned Mayer's claims.

"I've negotiated with AOL. And talked to a lot of folks who have. And Microsoft pushed hard to win this, very hard," he said. "I find it difficult to believe Parsons and Miller settled for "help us get smarter about how to be indexed by you, Google. Thanks very much."

Added Battelle: "There's something else going on. If there's not, well, OK then. Then AOL is deeply, deeply lame. And, honestly, so is Google, because it seems to me that before you decide to go scan every book in the world, you might drop a dime to your most important partner, and ask if you can help them index their content as well."