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Time Warner's AOL to stick with Google: WSJ

Elinor Mills Former Staff Writer
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service and the Associated Press.
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Elinor Mills

Another ball was lobbed in the virtual tennis match over America Online's future, with a report on Friday that Time Warner had entered exclusive talks about strengthening its advertising relationship with Google instead of dropping Google to partner with Microsoft.

Under the deal, which likely wouldn't be finalized until next week after Time Warner's board meeting Wednesday, Google would allow AOL to sell ads among the search results provided by Google on its properties and Google could promote AOL Web sites among sponsored links in search results, according to an unidentified source in the The Wall Street Journal online article.

Reports and rumors have swirled for months that Microsoft was negotiating to have AOL use the MSN search engine instead of Google.