Google (NSDQ: GOOG) may have given up hope for its Print Ads division, but not everyone thought it was such a bad idea. London-based Mediaequals has confirmed that it made an approach for the two-year-old division after its collapse was announced last week. A Google spokesman in London would neither confirm nor deny whether an official approach had been made. Google will shut down the division in February because it has not made the kind of impact it and its partners would have liked.

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Mediaequals runs an automated platform for buying ad space in newspapers and magazines, similar to the Google print scheme. If it picked up Google’s franchise, it would have access to more than 800 US newspapers. Mediaequal’s statement is keen to point out that its system “provides the efficiencies the print industry so desperately needs,” and says it plans to expand overseas following its UK launch last year—raising the question of whether this really is a business move or part of a PR campaign.