News Corp. may be angling for a way to keep Yahoo from falling into Microsoft's hands, but Fox Interactive Media (FIM), a subsidiary in Rupert Murdoch's media empire, is rumored to be looking for a way to extricate itself from an ad deal with Google while hopping into bed with, you guessed it, Microsoft.

According to a story in TechCrunch, executives at FIM are talking to Microsoft about taking over an ad serving deal the company made with Google in 2006. That deal, which guaranteed payments by Google to FIM of at least $900 million (provided certain traffic goals were met), appears to have become a sore spot for the search giant.

The bulk of the inventory in the Google/FIM deal pertains to MySpace. Recently Google co-founder Sergey Brin said the social networking space had been more of a challenge than he had anticipated. At the same time, reports surfaced that MySpace and Facebook -- once the darlings of web advertising -- were having trouble getting users to actually click on ads. 

That being said, it's not clear that Google wants out of the deal (although they may like to reexamine the terms). But Microsoft, which has come on strong with its bid for Yahoo, has also been working hard to land ad deals across the web.