BBC broke the news this morning that Google has signed a $1 billion deal with Fox Interactive Media (includes MySpace), to provide them with search across the network. Also included in this deal is some nice moneteization for MySpace with Google's contextual ads.
Starting this October and going through till 2010 at least, MySpace users will be able to use Google to search for friends and groups, and also smell the wonderful fragrance of Google's text ads — something I don't think this audience ("generation Y") has seen much of [these aren't text-based people we're talking about here, mind you], so it'll be interesting to see what the outcome of this turns out.
The fact that the web's top 2 sites are partnering up is quite big in itself, but I think what's more important is that if this works out well, it will prove that big money (or "Google money") is possible in Web 2.0 in-specific these MySpace/YouTube/Facebook-style social services. Also, another interesting fact is that a few months ago, Murdoch told Wired "I like those guys, but there’s a bit of arrogance" referring to Google, and now, a $1 billion partnership?
