San Francisco  - Internet search leader Google has signed a letter of intent with Digg to purchase the social news site for around 200 million dollars, the influential technology blog TechCrunch reported Tuesday.

The report said the deal would be finalized within two weeks and that Digg would continue to operate as part of the Google News operation, which already runs one of the most popular news sites on the web.

In contrast to Google News, where the stories are selected by computer algorithm, Digg's news stories are submitted by users and ranked according to user approval ratings. The report said that Google was interested in using Digg's technology to help improve its search results by having users vote on their quality.

Digg was formed in 2004 by entrepreneur Kevin Rose who used a programmer he found online for 10 dollars an hour. He paid 1,200 dollars for the domain name and 100 dollars a month for hosting the site, which is now ranked as one of the 100 most trafficked sites on the internet.

Digg has so far raised 11.3 million dollars in venture capital. Most of Digg's revenue comes from a three-year ad deal with google rival Microsoft, which will be terminated on a sale to Google, TechCrunch said. (dpa)