• Boomtown , Thursday, September 16, 2010 1:12 PM

Google and MySpace are moving close to signing a new agreement, "in which the search giant would remain the provider of search and online advertising technology for the social networking site," BoomTown reports, citing unnamed sources. Yet, "This deal is a lot different from the one signed four years back when the News Corp. unit was flying high and Google forked over $900 million in guaranteed payments to stave off a competitive effort from Microsoft."

Specifically, the new deal has no big guaranteed payments, nor any of the "bells and whistles" that came with Google's recently renewed search deal with AOL. "It is a different time and MySpace is in a much different place," one source tells BoomTown. "This is a realistic deal." Meanwhile, sources say that Microsoft -- which was in talks with MySpace too -- has pretty much bowed out.

Read the whole story at Boomtown »