Google's Defense Of AOL Deal Misses The Point

Google has posted a response to critics of the AOL deal on its official blog, but that response conveniently ignores most of the criticism levelled at the company. It's only a partial attempt to come clean. Google says that the deal won't bias search results in favor of AOL, and that there won't be banner ads on the Google main page or search result pages. It adds "there will not be crazy, flashy, graphical doodads flying and popping up all over the Google site."

All that is well and good. But it ignores some of the most serious problems with the deal:

* Google will give AOL preferred placement for AOL's videos in Google's video search in Google's new Google Video search site.

* Google will include links to AOL videos on the Google Video home page --- and won't label any of those links advertising, or call the preferred listings advertising, even though they clearly are ads.

*Google will begin experimenting with accepting many different kinds of graphical ads, including the banner ads loathed by many.Here's hoping that Google will include a new post on its blog, responding to these criticisms.

Google makes the best technology on the planet. I hope that it doesn't start the slide down the slippery slope of opting for short-term profit over all else.