AOL’s 20m internet customers make it a prized partnership target for both Google and Microsoft.

About 10 per cent of Google’s revenues come from advertisements placed on AOL’s website, even though AOL gets about 80 per cent of the revenue from these sales. Microsoft had spent much of the year courting AOL, as AOL’s existing agreement with Google was due to end in 2006, but Google won out with an agreement to buy 5 per cent of AOL for $1bn. Google will also provide AOL with $300m worth of advertising credit to promote AOL’s websites through Google’s advertising network, and will grant AOL unprecedented access to its own websites.