
EBay slashes Google ads, escalating rift. Analyst: 'The two companies have been on a collision course for a long time' - gibsonf1
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/06/14/BUG9LQER0T1.DTL
======
byrneseyeview
Where will I get my human remains (
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/merlin/55319283/in/set-1207345/> ) now?

"San Jose's eBay cut its advertising Monday shortly after Google unveiled
plans for a party in Boston to hawk its online payment service, Google
Checkout. Attendees of eBay's user conference, eBay Live, which starts today,
were all invited for free drinks, food and massages."

This is a little nutty. It's an increasingly bad business strategy to take
total control over a small market rather than some control over a big one.

------
davidw
"For years, eBay has been Google's biggest U.S. advertiser"

Wow... seems odd that they didn't set up their own ad network earlier. I just
don't see the lock-in for on-line ads - switching costs are low, and network
effects are not really a factor.

~~~
jey
I think the ads on Google search results pages were more important than
AdSense, a few advertisers have said the conversion rates are much higher on
the search results than on AdSense pages. But I wouldn't put it past eBay to
start an AdSense competitor.

------
andreyf
"In any case, eBay Live is frequently a stage for drama, and not just with
Google. Alibaba, an eBay rival in China, found out the hard way at eBay Live
last year in Las Vegas.

It had rented a restaurant in the hotel where eBay Live was holding a party.

An eBay executive who found out tried unsuccessfully to rent the restaurant
from under Alibaba, according to an Alibaba executive and a hotel employee
present during the animated discussion. The eBay executive eventually forced
Alibaba to remove all of its signs."

So let me get this straight... EBay executives are a bunch of insecure
bullying assholes? That, and they just gave up 188.3 million clicks from
Google? Note, however that searching Google for "used Playstation 3" still
gives me tons of appropriate results - including from other auctions.

~~~
aston
Your experience on Google is no worse, but if eBay doesn't come back, Google's
losing on the order of billions since they aren't selling high-priced ads at
large volume to eBay.

------
far33d
Here it is. Google's achilles heel. They rely heavily on some of their
competitors for revenue. Advertising will get in the way of technical
innovation and head on competition.

Get out there young entrepreneurs! Google might still be the big leader in
search, but their domination of all the commerce and information on the
internet is certainly not guaranteed. They have enormous conflicts of
interest.

~~~
danielha
It's their Achilles heel until it isn't, ya know? Microsoft was the software
company with invaluable relationships creating products for, say, Apple, until
that relationship wasn't as crucial to their being anymore.

But I definitely agree on your sentiments about the conflicts of interest.
There's a lot of things to consider.

~~~
far33d
But right now, ebay is enough of a customer that google (even with all its
growth and revenue) can't risk competing with them.

That's something of a market inefficiency. But, I agree, it's one that may
close quickly.

