It’s still a longshot, but it appears real discussions are happening between Yahoo! and News Corp. and could potentially displace Microsoft. In that circumstance, Yahoo! would take “ownership” of MySpace but News Corp. would become the largest single shareholder of Yahoo! The WSJ explains:
Its best chance may be a deal under discussion with News Corp., in which the media conglomerate would swap its ownership of MySpace and several other online properties for a stake of 20% or more in Yahoo, according to people familiar with the discussions.
Google would still serve the search ads on MySpace as part of their three-year deal. But Yahoo! would get massive page views, traffic and could serve display ads. This would add to Yahoo!’s existing CPM/display leadership. In such a scenario, Yahoo! would control roughly 35% of the CPM/display ad share:
A Microsoft acquisition is still the highest probability scenario, although this combination represents a potentially real alternative.
Screenwerk 