Winer thinks this is a battle, and that Microsoft is trying to change the name of a feature because they want to screw him. (I’m not making this up. That’s really what he said.) News flash: Microsoft is in business to sell software. The reason some people at Microsoft are exploring alternatives to RSS is because people don’t understand the term. You put an RSS button on a Web page, and most ordinary people just slide right by it. I’ve been to Microsoft’s usability labs, where they test features like this. My guess is that they’ve been testing RSS features in the labs, and they’re trying to find the words that will help people understand and use this technology. Software developers who’ve seen their features go through usability testing usually get a big wake-up call from the experience. Dave, you should schedule a visit to the usability lab and see for yourself.

When I worked for PC Computing in the 1990s, we spent over a million dollars building a state-of-the-art usability lab and conducting regular tests in it. The results radically changed the way reviews were written. An editor couldn’t just say that a feature was better or worse than its competition; he or she had to defend the conclusion based on watching the hands-on experience of real people who actually used the products under review.

The conversations have centered on whether AOL would switch to using Microsoft’s search engine, these people say. AOL currently uses Google Inc.’s search technology and was Google’s single largest source of revenue last year.

The talks, which were described as “preliminary,” have also included discussions of combining the advertising sales forces of AOL and Microsoft’s MSN, these people said.

[…]

In January, Microsoft briefed AOL executives about its new search engine, according to a person close to the situation. At that meeting, this person says, Microsoft said it would try to make it financially beneficial for AOL to switch to its technology. A person close to the discussions says the discussions have been “on and off” since January and many different proposals have been floated.

Although AOL’s Internet access business is in decline, AOL still generates a lot of traffic — making it a rich prize for search engines that thrive on huge volumes of traffic. AOL counts 110 million unique visitors to its online service and network of Web sites each month.

Since 2002, AOL has been using Google’s search engine for its properties. Under the agreement, Google pays AOL a portion of the advertising revenue generated from searches by AOL users. In 2004, AOL received about $300 million in revenues from the arrangement. Google says in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission that AOL accounted for 12% of revenues in 2004. No other customer accounted for more than 10%, it said.

If true, this is about hurting Google, not helping customers.

Update 2: Reuters quotes the original New York Post story:

Citing two unnamed sources familiar with the matter, the Post said the talks concern Microsoft acquiring an AOL stake and then combining it with Microsoft’s Web unit MSN.

Microsoft would pay Time Warner for the AOL stake, leaving the two companies approximately equal partners in the venture, the Post said.