You love to hear Eric Schmidt and Steve Ballmer say that Google and Microsoft aren't competing with each other. Sure. The Financial Times reported Tuesday that MySpace is actively in talks with both
companies to forge a search alliance that would gain the victor access to MySpace's user base of nearly 80 billion. Think of it like a good old Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras battle: if you thought
last year's 5 setter over AOL's traffic was a big deal, winning the MySpace Open would be akin to taking home all four majors. This is the second most populated site on the Web folks, and while the
lion's share of the revenue usually goes to the publisher in such deals, the incremental revenue would be a veritable bonanza. The front-runner? Probably Google since Rupert Murdoch has publicly
stressed the need to capitalize on search revenue, but News Corp.'s social network has much, much more to offer than search traffic to someone like Microsoft, with its fancy new AdCenter, which many
advertisers have responded to favorably.
Read the whole story at Financial Times »
