MySpace Google Agreement up for Renewal

It is believed News Corporation is in discussions with Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo about replacing MySpace’s search engine advertising agreement.

Google has the current agreement which is expected to expire in August. The agreement is $300 million/ year in revenue for MySpace and it very unlikely they will get anywhere near this figure going forward.

MySpace is a great site, but I’m certainly not liking anything they do with it lately. Possibly charging to use the Music section (at least, that’s what it sounds like) would be completely ridiculous and would likely kill off what’s left of the site.

Ever since DeWolfe and Tom left, the site has been plagued with all of these advertisements and layout changes. They’ll never reach the level Facebook is on unless they go back to their roots and revert the site to what made it great, but I don’t see this happening as it seems to be all about the money these days.

MySpace was originally purchased by News Corporation in 2005 for $580 million USD in cash and was overtaken in 2008 by Facebook as the number 1 social networking site in the world.