A recent posting in a blog of a Microsoft program manager indicates that Microsoft may be seeking to match Google’s cooperation deal with AOL. Ian McAllister writes that he "had a meeting the other day with some senior players at another Tier 1 Internet company."

This company, he continues, offered "to entertain ideas for working with Microsoft that would help our search and/or advertising business, with one of the goals being to prevent Google from dominating those spaces even more than they are now." This "Tier 1" company - he declined to reveal the name of the organization - "would help Microsoft level the playing field with Google in search and advertising."

So, which "Tier 1" company is McAllister talking about ? The only hints the program manager leaves are that this company may be powerful enough to match AOL’s Internet influence and that he is "99% positive" that the readers of his blog are a "customer" of that company.

The fact that he uses the word "customer" eliminates options such as Yahoo and drives the speculation about a possible deal into the direction of one of the major broadband Internet Service Providers such as Comcast and SBC/AT&T - which also offer cable TV and/or telephone services to a majority of the US population.