Possible Snag in Google/Fox Renegotiations

Fox and Google logosThe renegotiations over Google’s $900 million advertising deal with Fox may have hit a snag, the Wall Street Journal is reporting. And that snag may be eBay.

MySpace has been talking to eBay for several months about ways they could partner on what MySpace calls “peer commerce,” according to people familiar with the matter. The idea is to let MySpace users buy and sell items from each other using eBay’s online-commerce technology and its PayPal payment system, these people said. MySpace users would be able to post items for sale on their profiles, and their eBay auctions would be automatically updated, according to one person close to the discussions…Google isn’t likely to favor any deal that promotes eBay services that compete with its own. In the past 18 months Google has been increasingly encroaching on eBay’s territory. Google has added a listings service called Base where sellers can post products for sale and an online payment service called Checkout that competes with eBay’s PayPal.

I wouldn’t quite say that Google Base is a competitor to eBay, but certainly Google Checkout is driving hard at PayPal.

Like us, the WSJ is infatuated with Google and Fox, and reports often on their activities. They’re sometimes wrong, though. Last month the WSJ reported that Fox had invested $12 million in ROO. It turns out it was a pure stock-for-performance deal and no cash changed hands. Whoever is leaking this info to the WSJ may have their own agenda and the information may not be entirely accurate. We have an email in to Fox for a comment.