Bad Blood Between eBay and Google

Submitted by seobook on Wed, 2007-06-13 13:25

Rumours & Scandal

Google announced they were holding a let freedom ring party to promote Google Checkout during the eBay live conference. In (un)related news, eBay announced they were pulling their US AdWords ad budget. Google responded by canceling their freedom party.

What does this mean for the future of eBay's subdomain spam?

Comments

800 lbs Gorilla

Submitted by The Founder on Wed, 2007-06-13 13:40.

Google is the 800 lbs Gorilla sitting in a room full of internet firms.

Just replace the year 2007 with 1997 and the words Google with Microsoft.

Back then, how happy were firms to work with Microsoft:

A quote from Marc Andreessen from Netscape in that year:

"We all knows what happens when a firm 'partners' with Microsoft'.

History may not repeat itself

Submitted by Cygnus on Wed, 2007-06-13 15:13.

But it certainly does rhyme.

Paypal did this to eBay during the powerseller conferences back in the day; they handed out paypal shirts and really pissed off Whitman since more people were showing support for paypal than for ebay/billpoint.

Ah, those were the days.

Looks like my eBay/Yahoo theory might bear some fruit.

WTH

Submitted by Terry_SA on Wed, 2007-06-13 15:13.

WTH was Google thinking that the eBay Live party would be the appropriate venue to razzle dazzle Google Checkout?

No, all those eBay

Submitted by Brian_Turner on Wed, 2007-06-13 15:16.

No, all those eBay subdomains have to make for a good user experience on Google. :D

More seriously, though, it is interesting to see the mixed relationships betweens the ISPs - eBay own Paypal whom Google are trying to rival with Google Checkout - and yet eBay runs a search partnership with Google directly on its main site, but sells ads to Yahoo!. Dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight.

From ComputerWorld

Submitted by MrTurner on Wed, 2007-06-13 17:26.

Quote:

In March, eBay ranked first in the U.S. among paid-search advertisers with 802 million sponsored link exposures, or 4.1% of the total, according to comScore Inc. That doesn't even take into account eBay's comparison-shopping engine, Shopping.com, which ranked third on that list with 357 million sponsored link exposures, or 1.8% of the total.

Source

That's 6% and a huge chunk from Google (and Adsense publishers). While it'll hurt both parties, I don't blame Ebay for doing it. Getting the details of the party and the timing, it's a classless move.

With so much money at stake though, I'm sure both sides will kiss and makeup.

share prices

Submitted by SlyOldDog on Wed, 2007-06-13 22:55.

>>That's 6% and a huge chunk from Google (and Adsense publishers). While it'll hurt both parties, I don't blame Ebay for doing it. Getting the details of the party and the timing, it's a classless move.

Funny - both shares had a decent jump yesterday.

Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight

Submitted by ukgimp on Thu, 2007-06-14 06:23.

Harry Hill - There's Only One Way To Find Out... Fight

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YxrTRLvIs4

Ebay is the only kid in the playground hard enough to square up to Google :-)

In March, eBay ranked first

Submitted by Adam Bunn on Thu, 2007-06-14 06:29.

In March, eBay ranked first in the U.S. among paid-search advertisers with 802 million sponsored link exposures, or 4.1% of the total, according to comScore Inc. That doesn't even take into account eBay's comparison-shopping engine, Shopping.com, which ranked third on that list with 357 million sponsored link exposures, or 1.8% of the total.

Though, how much of this is actually eBay and how much is eBay affiliates? Or are they going to ban affiliates from using AdWords as well...

Or are they going to ban

Submitted by ghoti on Thu, 2007-06-14 15:36.

Or are they going to ban affiliates from using AdWords as well...

eBay updated their affiliate guidelines on June 1 to prevent affiliates from using ebay.com as the display URL for ads on Google/Yahoo/MSN. So direct traffic from affiliates using those search engines is already supposed to have been stopped.

If eBay hadn't implemented this rule change, there would still be ebay.com ads running on Google today (i.e., from the affiliates). I wouldn't be surprised if the June 1 change was closely related to the June 13 surprise.

It ain't 6%

Submitted by shorebreak on Thu, 2007-06-14 23:03.

EBay operates at much lower average CPC's than Google's overall client base, so while 6% of total Google ads might be EBay's, those ads probably represent ~1% of Google's total revenues.

I have been seeing 3% in many articles...

Submitted by StephenBauer on Fri, 2007-06-15 09:51.

...by business journalists and a few mentions of 5.9%

The numbers aren't as

Submitted by hardball on Fri, 2007-06-15 10:55.

The numbers aren't as important as the culture of arrogance that caused it. More hits are inevitable moving forward if they don't learn how to play well with others.

My observations/experiences with arrogant companies is that in 99% of the cases its a top-down disease, very hard to treat.

It's not about us...it's all about them

Submitted by Oracle100 on Sat, 2007-06-16 01:07.

I heard this at a Jay Abraham workshop.
Ït's not about us. It's all about them."
meaning we should focus on serving our customers, not the other way round.
Self-centeredness. I'm the ONLY ONE who matters in the universe, attitude.
Saw a video yesterday, about using Banner advertising to get traffic. Hmm.. will post a story on this one.

[promo removed by I, Brian - don't ask TW readers for backlinks]