Google & MySpace... together at last!

News Corporation has picked Google for a three-year deal that sees the search giant manage advertising on the media conglomerate’s hugely popular social networking site MySpace.

As part of the deal, Google, which beat Yahoo! and Microsoft for the contract, will be able to offer its advertising clients access to one of the internet's biggest audiences. Google is expected to pay at least $900 million (£470 million) to News Corp over the three years of the revenue-sharing deal.

MySpace will use Google's technology to allow its users to search the site and the wider web, and Google will match search queries with relevant adverts. Both sides will take a cut of the fee charged to advertisers when a user clicks on their ad.

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The news of the deal comes as rival US media group Viacom is considering a bid for Bebo, another social networking site, after its failure to defeat Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp in the race for MySpace last year.

MySpace.com was set up less than three years ago and has nearly 100 million registered users worldwide.

But despite owning one of the largest customer bases on the internet, News Corp said it has not fully exploited advertising sales opportunities at the unit and therefore needed to explore new opportunities.

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