This was supposedly embargoed, but since Reuters has gone ahead, I'm sure we can too.
Friendster will confirm the deal today that we mentioned in January: an exclusive search and ad deal with Google. We spoke to Friendster about the partnership last week, and the conclusions are pretty clear: it's a win for Friendster (signing with a company that can monetize their pages effectively), a win for Google (another major social network signed up) and a loss for Yahoo, which previously powered search on the site. Google was chosen because it's able to monetize Friendster's pages far more effectively than Yahoo's ad network and other competitors. The Google search box is coming in the second quarter of 2007, we were told.
Friendster is also keen to promote the fact that it's now growing like crazy and certainly on the rebound - we may publish some of their stats later today.
[img src="" caption="" credit="" alt=""]