The Greased Pig of Search is About to Get Caught

The greased pig of the search world is about to get caught. Apparently the pig is a prized ham after all. Have you ever been to a greased pig catching contest? Almost twenty years ago, while hitchhiking my way across the vast Canadian prairies one youthful summer, I saw one and let me tell ya, it was better than watching donkey baseball. (another bizarre Canadian pastime. It's best not to ask too many questions at this point eh?). Ok, here's what happens. A bunch of piglets are covered in cooking oil or some other organic slippery substance. They are then put in a holding pen that opens onto a large ring. A number of young people, mostly in their late teens or early twenties gather at one end of ring and wait for the chute doors to open. By the time contest begins, many of the participants, like most of the spectators, will tend towards the drunken end of the sobriety scale having spent the summer afternoon participating in that most Canadian of pastimes, drinking down a few 24s of beer. When the chute opens and the greased pigs are released, the crowd is treated to a spectacle that can only be described as absolute mayhem. He or she who catches the most greased pigs wins. Now, there are variations on the game, one of which was used in the filming of a lottery commercial earlier this year. In one of the more literate variations, letters are either painted on, or otherwise affixed to the pigs. The contestants then try to spell words based on the letters on their caught greased pig. That brings us to today's special game, which is brought to us by the letters, A, O, and L. For the past three months, AOL has been acting like the greased pig of the search engine world. Each of the other major players has been trying to capture a piece of AOL but according to the breathless reporting in publications such as the Wall St. Journal, Search Engine Watch, CNet News and Murdok, AOL has been playing each against the other. It is much easier to understand the motivation of the four-legged greased pigs than it is to figure out the game of negotiated brinksmanship AOL is playing. In the traditional country fair version of the game, the greased pigs do not wish to be caught. When such sport takes place in a boardroom owned by the greased pig however, it is somewhat reasonable for participants to assume said greased pig actually wishes to be caught. In the case of AOL's game of greased pig, appearances have often been deceiving and experiences will change during actual game play. Nevertheless, the greased pig is about to be caught and when it does, a series of events will eventually affect nearly 80% of US Internet users. Of all the major search entities, AOL has one of the longest, most interesting and convoluted stories. It still has one of the biggest membership bases of any entity on the Internet with an estimated 97 million. It is owned and operated by the board of the Time Warner publishing empire. AOL purchased Time Warner in early 2000 in a legendary stock transfer that took place weeks before the dot-com crash removed much of the value of those shares. The major search engines wanted AOL outright but eventually found it wasn't for sale as an entity. In late October and early November, Firefox browser. One of the least appreciated assets owned by AOL was the group of open-source programmers who developed Netscape and moved on to form the independent