Time Magazine Editor Josh Quittner and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong took the stage on Friday afternoon at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen. Most of the interview was centered on AOL’s content strategies. But what I really wanted to know about was what AOL’s plans were around search . Their long term Google deal expires in December. And from what we hear both Microsoft and Google are gunning for AOL’s search traffic. Why? AOL is the fourth largest U.S. search engine, but they have just 2.5% market share . If Microsoft could add AOL’s searches, though, they’d be, with Yahoo’s share, above 30%. Search volume brings more advertisers, and more advertisers means a more robust bidding system. Microsoft needs that 2.5%. But there’s more. AOL visitors tend to click on search ads at more than twice the rate that people click on ads on Google’s search engine. So that 2.5% market share is really more like 6% of total search advertising market share. Google has paid AOL more than $600 million/year for search over the last several years . With the appropriate amount of negotiating leverage, that number could increase dramatically. Armstrong says there are more than two companies competing for their search traffic, which presumably means Yahoo has somehow gotten itself into the mix. But the only real competition, says our sources (and common sense), is Microsoft and Google. Both companies want the deal. The bids are getting high enough that one person familiar with the negotiations suggested (jokingly, I think) that it may be cheaper just to buy AOL outright – their current market cap is just $2.25 billion. Lots of people are keeping an eye on the ongoing MySpace search negotiations. But the MySpace deal will be a pittance compared to what AOL brings in. We expect a deal to be done by September, based on information from sources. CrunchBase Information AOL Tim Armstrong Information provided by CrunchBase

One thing Silicon Valley doesn’t have enough of are solid product visionaries. The problem is the really good ones tend of start their own companies. Or whoever they work for locks them up so tight that no one can pry them loose. But there’s one guy I’ve kept my eye on for the last few years, Eckart Walther , who seems to be in play. I wonder for how long. I first met Eckart when he was at Yahoo as a group vice president of product management for search – that was back in the day when Yahoo was still the no. 2 search engine behind Google and had no plans to relinquish that title. Prior to Yahoo he was at Tellme ( acquired by Microsoft ). And way back in the day, at Netscape. Most recently he parked himself at LiveOps doing God-knows-what. He’s left LiveOps and has quietly taken a position at Accel Partners as an entrepreneur in residence. That means he’s being paid to sit around and think a lot, and occasionally join a meeting or two. I randomly saw this on his Facebook feed this evening and haven’t had a chance to talk to him about his plans. But he’s likely to either be starting a new company or looking for his next job at a startup. Keep an eye on whatever he does next, it’s likely to be something worth watching. Follow him on Twitter at @eckartwalther . CrunchBase Information Accel Partners Eckart Walther Information provided by CrunchBase

Behavioral targeting is all the rage with online display advertising right now, and video search engine blinkx is bringing it to video. For the past few years, blinkx has offered contextual video advertising through its Ad Hoc program , which matches ad keywords against a speech-to-text translation of the video, as well as all the tags and titles associated with that video. “We are extending targeting in Ad Hoc from contextual to behavioral,” says CEO Suranga Chandratillake. He explains the new targeted advertising product in the video below (I caught up with him last week as he was passing through New York City). Overall, blinkx powers 17.5 million video searches a day across its network, which reaches more than 60 million people a month. But for now, the behavioral targeting will work only on blinkx.com, which is a small part of its overall reach. Using cookies, blinkx will assign psychographic profiles to people base don what they watch. It will start with nine profiles, including Yoga Moms, Digital Dads, Gossip Girls, Adventurers, and Infonauts. Brands will be able to target specific segments by showing their ads only to Yoga Moms or Digital Dads. People are classified in the different buckets depending on what they watch. Binkx trains the system by extracting different concepts from each video and matching them to a profile. For instance, videos about children, crafts, soccer, or terrible twos are the types of things Yoga Moms supposedly watch. Advertisers can see the keywords associated with each psychographic profile to determine who they want to go after. By blending contextual and behavioral targeting, Chandratillake thinks he can get the best of both worlds. But true behavioral targeting would probably require data inputs from beyond blinkx.com, and even beyond any group’s video viewing habits. True behavioral targeting would take into account what websites you visited recently, and not just what videos you’ve watched. But blinkx is starting with what it can control. Down the line, it might have to incorporate data from broader behavioral targeting ad networks. CrunchBase Information blinkx Information provided by CrunchBase

Yesterday we broke the news that Aardvark , the social search engine, was being acquired by Google for $50 million. Aardvark confirmed the acquisition to us yesterday (though they didn’t comment on the amount), and now Google and Aardvark have publicly announced the deal with posts to their official blogs , along with some more details about how Aardvark will be integrated with Google. Unlike some of Google’s past startup acquisitions that  resulted in services shutting down or restricting new user signups, Aardvark is going to continue running at full steam.  New users can still sign up, and it’s already featured as part of Google Labs (though it hasn’t been integrated with Google search at all — it’s just a link to Vark.com). As far as changes to the service, a Q&A on the Aardvark blog says that they’ll be able to move faster as Google puts its support behind it (some Googlers will be joining the Aardvark team). CrunchBase Information Aardvark Google Information provided by CrunchBase

I’ve been a fan of Apple’s Mail.app for quite some time, even though we’ve had our ups and downs , it’s gotten the job done. One of my biggest beefs with Mail.app is searching through past emails. It’s just horrible. Central Atomics is hoping to fix that problem with Rocketbox . Rocketbox is a new way of searching your e-mail in Apple Mail.app — it’s more advanced than Mail’s search, with the ability to search by person, a search engine that is up to 200x faster than Mail’s, and powerful filters that make it easy to find what you need. One neat thing about Rocketbox is its search-by-person suggestions.  Rocketbox analyzes your e-mail correspondence and provides a list of important contacts when you search, so you know who you’ve emailed the most. Also, Rocketbox will show you Inline previews, with highlighted snippets telling you why a message was found, making it easier to scan through emails. The highlighted section then helps you improve your queries and takes the guess work out of using search. Rocketbox is extremely similar to Xobni , which is the Windows alternative, with a few more features like social network information, and contact information, etc. Overall, Rocketbox is a great addition to Mail.app, and the entire search experience. You can get a 30 day trial, or buy the full version or $14.95, but the first 100 TechCrunch readers to use the code “ TECHCRUNCH “ can get Rocketbox for $9.95, instead of the regular $14.95, when checking out. CrunchBase Information Central Atomics Information provided by CrunchBase