EBay, in a surprisingly defensive move, has yanked all of its advertising from Google’s network (a story that has been widely covered).
The action came after Google planned a fun party — with free drinks, food and massages — to pitch its online payment service, Google Checkout in Boston during eBay’s user conference there.
This was a direct attack on eBay’s PayPal service, and surprisingly aggressive given Google chief executive Eric Schmidt’s insistence that Google Checkout wasn’t a competitor to PayPal. It also comes after years of tension between the two companies: Four years ago, Google emerged as a threat — luring merchants away from eBay to have them advertise their wares via Google’s Adwords.
Google abruptly canceled the party yesterday, but only after eBay had made the advertising decision. EBay will be using the money to spend for advertising on Microsoft and Yahoo. This is the sharpest break between eBay and Google yet, and it’s not likely to get better: Google is too much of a threat. Its rare to have such visible cold wars in the valley, the latest being Peoplesoft vs. Oracle.
5 Comments
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John Doe said:
I wonder if they will finally remove advertisment that competes with their own customers form their website or continue to thrive on ad dollars …
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Boris Epstein said:
Can somebody help me understand why Google charges more per click than sites like Yahoo or MSN. Are they trying to say that their visitors clicking on a site are somehow worth more than the same visitor clicking from MSN or Yahoo?
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Clint Schmidt said:
Boris: having a slightly higher CPC keeps some of the “rif-raff” advertisers out, preserving premium placement for serious marketers with meaningful budgets. Although the price delta is small, it add up fast and creates a real quality control on a macro level.
Clint :)
Seattle, WA -
Matt Giteau said:
So Clint, are you implying that Google advertisers are somehow “better” than their Yahoo! and MSFT counterparts? That is a pretty snobbish statement. I would put money that exactly the same people who advertise on Google also advertise on the other networks. I guess Google just thinks they can charge more (and probably can, for now).
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Ronnie Somerville said:
Great , no eBay means an end to those stupid ads like, “Buy entropy on eBay now” .. that were always in direct contradiction to Google’s rules for Adsense. Maybe they thought if the twats from eBay are stupid enough to pay millions for them we might as well run them…
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