AOL CEO Tim Armstrong hinted that this was coming, but this morning Google and AOL announced a five-year renewal of the search deal between the two companies. Google will continue to power search across AOL’s content network and properties. The partnership will be expanded to include mobile search and YouTube.
Armstrong said in a statement “Today is another important step in the turnaround of AOL…AOL users will be getting a better search and search ads experience from the best search company in the world – Google. After nearly a decade-long partnership in search, we’re looking forward to expanding our global relationship to mobile search and YouTube. All aspects of our partnership will be improved by this deal.”
As part of the agreement Google will power search across AOL’s networks, will provide AOL with ad formats, and will power mobile search. And AOL and YouTube have agreed to bring AOL’s video content to YouTube.
It’s a big win for Google, since Microsoft’s Bing was clearly after the deal as well. But Armstrong said in February that “distribution is almost as important to us as money, we will look for distribution as much as money in the deal.” Google sends massive traffic to AOL sites, which could have made it a more attractive partner than Bing. Of course, Bing isn’t lacking in its own deals-the search engine now counts Yahoo as a partner.