David Notik

There's news today that Google has filed documents with the SEC that shed new light on its alliance with AOL. Google plans to create a separate Limited Liability Company to hold its AOL interests (called HoldCo in the documents), and in July of 2008 Time Warner has the right to buy it back for appraised fair market value, or the holding company can go public itself.

This of course shows that Google really isn't concerned with diluting its own business with AOL assets, and their main concern is the attention of AOL's userbase. I believe Google wants AOL to succeed on its own, as its still an easy way for many to get onto the otherwise unwieldily Internet. The more people on the Internet, the more people can use Google's services.

Google will show AOL how to be viable on the open Internet. After that, it might make more sense for Time Warner to manage it themselves. My prediction is that Google proves to be the best thing that ever happened to AOL. On the other hand, not everyone agrees it's good for Google.

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Also of note in the SEC filings about the alliance is the detail that Google Talk users will have to first register with the AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) service to be able to communicate with AIM users. (One implication of this might be that rather than blindly let Google users connect to AIM users, AOL instead has knowledge of these users and can count them as part of their own userbase.) The filings clearly state that you'll be able to connect to AIM via the Google Talk client, and they make no mention of other clients.

But Google is firmly and publicly about open communications and the ability to choose your client. So it seems safe to say that when I register my Google Talk account with AIM, I will be able to (eventually perhaps) then speak to AIM users from any client that supports the Google Talk service (and any client can, really).

With this scenario, Google makes inroads towards open communications on an open Internet.

Updated.