AOL Roughed Up By Google Search Habits

People heading to Google for search rather than kicking off their queries at Google-powered AOL equals another quarter of middling financial performance coming up for the portal.

AOL is trying to do all the right things with its technology. They opened up AIM for developers, with the hopes that new applications will bring more people to the rest of AOL's services. When they had the opportunity to cover the Live 8 concerts online in 2005, AOL earned praise while MTV received jeers for its efforts.

The monthly search market figures from services like Hitwise, Compete, and Nielsen all tell an awful truth. AOL has a small single-digit share of the search market.

That translates to minimal paid search revenue, a situation that vexes Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes. search, and its web properties feature search boxes, yet the ubiquity of Google carries people back to it by inertia.