First we heard about MSN merging with or acquiring AOL (well, not first…but first in this latest pattern of events)…

When that happened, Google must have been concerned that they could lose all the ad revenue from the AdSense revenue on all of AOL’s properties, including those from its subscriber base as well as high traffic sites it owns such as Mapquest, Digital Cities, and others. (Mapquest and DCI are both good sources of local content…not to mention having a subscriber base implies you have a billing address so ads can also be targeted to them locally). If MSN pulled this off, it would have been a big deal for their ad product, still in its infancy.

Then, Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger form an alliance that makes users from both their networks able to communicate to each other, forming a large network (though still not as large as AIM’s.

The question that came to mind was: Did they do that to take away market share from AOL or was it a preemptive move against Google (in which case, based upon what I’ve seen thus far from Google’s product, they must know about some future release that I don’t know because I haven’t felt even remotely compelled to switch to the talk product yet).

On top of all the sites AOL already had within its network, it added Weblogs, Inc..

Now, Google and Comcast have teamed up to buy a minority stake in AOL. Perhaps this was done to block any future attempts to merge/buyout MSN or others (at least for the near term).

Seems as if, with CPC ad revenues on the rise, content is making a comeback and those making the most money will be those who either have the customers, the consumers, or both.

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