If Google falls through, consider trying with Yahoo.
Why?
1) Yahoo clearly wants to spend lots of money for anything remotely connected to 'social networking'.
2) One of CoH's big strengths was it's community which could be considered as 'social networking'.
3) CoH already had an in-game mechanism for displaying advertisements.
4) Advertisements could be added to the loading screen.
I think Yahoo might be tapped out just now.
But I was reading about the Tumblr acquisition last night, about which there seems to be uniform angst - except amongst Yahoo staff. Anyway, in one comment section some guy posted a picture of what Tumblr is likely to look like shortly after Yahoo takes the reins: it was hilarious, because it was true.
He drew a picture of the 'home" Tumblr screen and it had Yahoo! tags all over it.
"Brought to you by Yahoo!"
"Powered by Yahoo! mail!"
"Yahoo! friends!"
"Yahoo! mail"
"Yahoo! music"
"Yahoo! news!"
"Yahoo! stock quotes!"
"Flickr! Powered by Yahoo!"
"Horoscopes! Y shine!"
"Featured Yahoo! videos!"
Anyways there were like 50 tags, and its funny 'cause its true. If Yahoo! were to buy CoX, they would be a very heavy, immersion-breaking presence in the game. Now, at this point I want our game back so badly, I would tolerate that. But streamlined and elegant, Yahoo! is not. [I also think this Tumblr acquisition will turn out to be a financial disaster for them, but my opinion is meaningless in the scheme of things.]