31 August 2006
Google's AOL Marketplace Account
It’s been a while since my last post because there’s not been anything worthwhile to report on. I wouldn’t really say that this was even worthwhile to report on either, but it’s something new that I found so I thought I’d share it with you...
Cast your minds back to the 20th December 2005, when Google’s Time Warner’s AOL and Google to Expand Strategic Alliance press release mentioned something called AOL Marketplace (the emphasis being mine):
Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt said: “ [...] Today’s agreement leverages technologies from both companies to connect Google users worldwide to a wealth of new content. We’ve also created a simple way for AOL Marketplace advertisers to buy and place search-related advertising across the AOL network. [...] ”
...
The agreement’s broad range of new features for users and advertisers include:
- Creating an AOL Marketplace through white labeling of Google’s advertising technology – enabling AOL to sell search advertising directly to advertisers on AOL-owned properties;
...
AOL and Google have also agreed to extend the term of their existing European relationship, and, subject to mutual agreement, they may extend the AOL Marketplace internationally. In addition, Google, AOL and Time Warner may choose to expand the new partnership to Time Warner’s other advertising opportunities.
Whilst I was doing some ‘routine’ interrogations of Google’s services, I just saw the following for the first time:
You’re probably already used to seeing something similar, which would usually look something like this:
So, what’s an AOL Marketplace account? I’m assuming that it’s simply a Google Account by another name so that the AOL Marketplace users don’t get too confused. But that raises a couple more questions. What is the AOL Marketplace? And how do you access it?
Does anyone know...?
(Just for the record, at the time of writing this, a Google search for ["AOL Marketplace account"] returns zero results, so I’m guessing that nobody really knows just yet...)
Update: 13 September 2006 (00:26)
I’ve just noticed that AOL Marketplace account has now been updated to AOL Search Marketplace account instead:
Still no more clues as to what this is though...
(And just for the record, at the time of writing this update, a Google search for ["AOL Search Marketplace account"] returns zero results...)
