Murdoch: No bid for Yahoo

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- News Corp. is not considering a bid for Internet giant Yahoo, said CEO Rupert Murdoch during an earnings call with analysts Monday.

Microsoft's unsolicited $45 billion bid for Yahoo announced last Friday sparked speculation the company might receive a rival bid from a media company like News Corp.

Murdoch was asked by analysts and reporters seeking to hear more about the company's future acquisition plans, whether or not the company planned to make a bid for AOL.

Murdoch said the company was not interested in AOL, adding that News Corp was not considering any other acquisitions at the present time.

AOL is owned by Time Warner, the parent company of CNNMoney.com.

News Corp. has been aggressively pursuing the online advertising industry since its acquisition of MySpace in 2005.

The company has been gradually expanding the advertising capabilities of its social network MySpace. According to COO Peter Chernin who was also on the call, MySpace is developing a do-it-yourself advertising system to allow small businesses to place their own ads on the site.

Chernin added that MySpace's participation in Google's Open Social system, which lets developers build widgets for social networks, will help keep users on the site. The social networking site's main rival, Facebook, has a similar system that lets programmers create games and other applications using a person's profile and friend data.

News Corp. reported second quarter earnings of 27 cents per share after the close of trade Monday in-line with analyst estimates. The company's revenues rose 10 percent to $8.59 billion from $7.84 billion a year earlier.

Revenues from News Corp's. Fox Interactive Media division, which includes MySpace, were driven by search ads, mostly from its partnership with Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) rival Google (GOOG, Fortune 500), said Chernin.

The media giant also has big plans for the online portion of the newly acquired Wall Street Journal. According to Murdoch, the Journal's core business news will remain subscription-only, but News Corp will make more non-business content, such as blogs, opinion articles and video, freely available to the public.

Murdoch also said News Corp. (NWS, Fortune 500) would expand the Journal's audience by adding more political, cultural and international news, and sharing content with Fox News.