Google and AOL just announced that they have renewed their global search alliance for another five years. Google will continue to power search on all of AOLs properties. For the most part, the new agreement just reinforces the existing contract, but the two companies also plan to expand their current alliance to cover mobile search and AOLs videos will now be syndicated on YouTube. According to the latest data from Web analytics firm comScore, AOL currently accounts for 2.3% of the search market in the U.S.
In his statement about today’s announcement, Google’s CEO and chairman Eric Schmidt notes that “It’s particularly exciting to see our relationship expand into video and mobile. These areas are now at the heart of users’ online experiences and at the core of both of our businesses.” As AOL is currently renewing its focus on mobile apps, it only makes sense for this renewed search agreement to specifically cover this area, too. While the two companies did not disclose any financial details of the new deal, AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong told Bloomberg earlier today that “this deal is a lot of revenue and a lot of potential profits for AOL.”
The new agreement between AOL and Google comes shortly after Microsoft and Yahoo finalized the transition from Yahoo’s search engine to Microsoft’s Bing. Based on comScore’s data, Google and AOL currently command about 68.1% of the search market in the U.S. and the combined market share of Microsoft and Yahoo is about 28.1%.
