News Corp. Chooses Google To Provide MySpace Search
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Google Inc. will provide Internet search and advertising features for News Corp.’s MySpace.com Web site in a transaction that will generate at least $900 million in revenue over three years for News Corp.
Google will be the exclusive provider of search and keyword advertising software for News Corp.’s Fox Interactive sites including MySpace, the companies said yesterday in a statement.
MySpace is the sixth most-popular American Web site and the fastest growing of the top 15 tracked by Com-Score Networks Inc.
Google, the most-used Internet search engine, beat out Microsoft Corp. and replaces Yahoo! Inc. as a search engine on MySpace, gaining access to its 52.3 million young users who find friends and exchange messages online. Google will sell ads on MySpace and other Fox sites and share revenue with News Corp.
“MySpace’s audience is highly desirable for a certain class of advertisers,” an analyst with Jupiter Research in New York, David Card, said. “It’s a very good partnership. It’s the best search engine and the best social-networking site.”
Under the deal, which is set to start in the fourth quarter, Mountain View, California-based Google will run MySpace advertising like it does for sites including Time Warner Inc.’s AOL and the Washington Post. Google will sell ads that appear next to search results on MySpace and will also display ads that are linked to the content of Web pages.
Google shares rose $3.30, or 0.9%, to $381.25 in extended trading after climbing $4.10 to $377.95 at 4 p.m. in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading.The shares have dropped 8.9% this year. New York-based News Corp. rose 10 cents to $19.08 after falling 7 cents to $18.98 on the New York Stock Exchange.
