Is Google’s One Trick Pony About To Be Euthanized by Microsoft?

Judging from the quality of the site, I parsed that as an overlooked typo of "patience."

i'd drop google like a rock if they did that. I use them very little as it is... bing's video search kicks google video search's a.

The article also includes the bizarre suggestion that Google would react to all this by making their services chrome only - rather than doing the thing they are way better than Microsoft at - innovation.

I am sure in this battle of the behemoth a round or two can be won with money - especially since their are other heavy weight players - Apple, Amazon etc. circling and strategic plays are always going to be happening - but Microsoft have had three goes at getting to where Google are now and being in second place in the search wars would surely motivate Google to stop innovating with passing nonsense like Wave and the like and put all their best brains back on search.

Apple would because nowadays Google is a more direct competitor than Microsoft is. Mozilla, I would consider far less likely; they're less profit-driven, more ideological, Google aligns more ideologically (although not completely), and Microsoft and Google are about equally direct competitors.

More money?

Also, Apple might be strategically happier working with Microsoft than Google right now.

Google has Mozilla LOCKED in through 2011.

Mozilla makes $50 - 80 million a YEAR from their search referrals.

But in context, MSFT has tens-of-billions in CASH sitting around, and is trying to win the internet space.

If they did a 1.5x revenue payout vs google (keeping in mind that's not all cash lay out, they net gains from use of their search engine) and dropped a billion in 5 years I would vote for that as a shareholder.

Does it matter? Does anybody still use AOL? What service do they provide these days?

It's a reskinned Internet Explorer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aol_Browser

Probably an ugly wrapper around Gecko or IE.