By now I am sure that you have heard or read the AOL acquisition rumors — rumors that Microsoft may aquire AOL…
This rumor got Slashdotted, and Russell Beattie wrote about this as well, and as always, Russ provided his insights and food-for-thought into the matter, in this case on who will really acquire AOL: Google? Microsoft? Yahoo!?
From my perspective, I really don't care who acquires AOL… but what I really care about is that whomever acquires it, should open the networks and services — imagine the AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and ICQ networks (used by 84 million people) plus all Jabber-based IM (such as Google) all open, allowing for new desktop and mobile products that integrate these, resulting in innovation. This level of cross IM openness I have been waiting for years.
That said, the only company that so far have had such vision of openness is Google… Google has proven that is not just a search and content company… Google has proven that it is a (technology) enabler and an innovator. So it would be great for the rest of us if Google acquires AOL, and opens the AOL networks and products, and exposes all the related services… As open as they can be. And let's not forget they would also get to own Netscape… That would be a good thing for innovation.
ceo