The blogosphere is rife with rumours that Google is about to put in another bid for social news site Digg.
 
It is thought that the two parties have signed a letter of intent and that an official announcement of the deal, rumoured to be for $200 million, will follow within the next few weeks.
Digg has built up a substantial and devoted following in the social-media space with its popularity system that allows people to mark or vote for news stories they like.
 
Industry experts are still speculating on Google's precise motivations for the deal.
 
However, it is widely believed that the search giant wants to harvest Digg's large web community as a new revenue stream for its ads.
 
Other industry developments could also be playing their part, as Google watches its rivals jumping on the social bookmarking bandwagon.
 
AOL has just relaunched social news site Propeller, with the inevitable view of integrating it into Bebo.
 
And Yahoo! has shown how a major search engine can flex its muscles on a news aggregator. Yahoo! Buzz is already enjoying more traffic than Digg just less than a year after its launch.