MySpace gorilla gets giant Google banana

Via GigaOm we get a lucid deconstruction of the just-announced deal between Google and MySpace. For $900 million dollars in payments over the next several years, Google has won the right to serve ads on all of Fox Interactive’s properties and to be the default search provider for web searches coming from MySpace. This is a big deal since Om reports that “nearly 10.8% of Google’s traffic was coming from MySpace.com for the week ending July 29, 2006″ and that “had Fox gone with Yahoo or Microsoft, it could have been a serious blow to Google.” But what does this mean for netrepreneurs?

Besides giving kudos to Google for not dropping the ball a second time (they passed on buying MySpace early on for about $290 million, half of what Rupert Murdoch payed), as well as giving kudos to Rupert himself for making what everyone sees now was the best purchase in recent internet history, there is one important observation that it almost pains me to make. And that is that eyeballs are worth more than ever. Whenever I hear someone say that a voice in my head screams, “bubble!” But because of Google’s ad targeting prowess, eyeballs really can bring in the money. I’m cautiously optimistic that this time around there actually is something to be truly excited about. If I’m right, growing an audience just got a whole lot more interesting.