At press time, Microsoft and Google are still going at it hot and heavy to win an important search advertising partnership with AOL. Once upon a time, the interests in that tussle would have been clearer: Microsoft was the evil corporate empire looking to dominate the digital world at the desktop and beyond, while Google was the beloved rebel alliance that wanted to catalog all the Web’s knowledge and offer it up for free, maybe making a few bucks in the process.
Now, however, Google is firmly entrenched as the dominant force in search ads, poised (and perhaps willing) to leverage that power in areas beyond online marketing. So watching the pair scrap over the AOL audience is a little like being a citizen of Tokyo watching Godzilla go 10 rounds with Mothra. You’re not totally sure you want either of them to win, because they’re both pretty scary and unpredictable. All you know for sure is that by the time the fight’s over, the neighborhood’s going to be pretty busted up.
As it comes to dominate the Internet, both through search ads and features designed to draw and hold the users who view those ads, Google
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