MUMBAI: In a bid to strengthen its online business media conglomerate News Corp is believed to be looking to acquire search engine Blinkx.

Media reports state that the San Francisco based Blinkx provides searches of video files on the Web. It competes with Google and Yahoo in that category. News Corp has also launched a takeover bid for Australian online property-listing site realestate.com.au.
As had been reported earlier by Indiantelevision.com News Corp paid $580 million for Intermix Media, which operates the MySpace.com site. however reports say that it is unlikely that News Corp will spend as much on Blinkx. Earlier this year News Corp launched Fox Interactive Media, a new internet division that includes all of News Corp's web properties.

Media companies have been scooping up internet names in a bid to profit from the online advertising boom, fuelled in part by the popularity of web search ads from Google and Yahoo. They also want to make up revenue that they lost as more classified advertising was put on websites.