The Wonderful World of the Gundampilotspaz

A contrite Google Inc. canceled a party that irked eBay Inc. and –
according to a source — prompted the online auction firm
to
remove all of its ads from Google’s U.S. network earlier this week.

On Monday, Google announced it would throw a party in Boston on Thursday
evening designed to attract eBay merchants who would be in town to attend the
eBay Live annual seller conference.

The purpose of the party: protesting eBay’s decision to forbid merchants in
its marketplace from using Google’s Checkout online transaction system.

EBay found Google’s move to be in bad taste and, at some point after the party
was announced, took the drastic measure of pulling all of its ads from
Google’s AdWords U.S. network.

A source familiar with the situation said that eBay’s decision to turn off the
ads had come from the company’s top executives who were steaming over what
they perceived as a low blow by Google designed to embarrass eBay in front of
its top merchants.

I find this very interesting because it brings forward a lot of tension between
the two companies. Everyone is frightened at the force Google can muster, as
they should be. Google is the greatest company in the world and they are
beginning to compete against sites and programs that they are doing it
completely free. No wonder Ebay is worried.

But would Google checkout coming onto Ebay be a big deal? I have been a paypal
user for years and I don’t think I’d change just because I could. I’ve never had
a problem with paypal. There is already a massive established and set user base;
most of which use it for more than Ebay. There is no reason to fear Checkout.
But… it’s google! The frightening shadow looming over every technology company
on the planet. It’s teeth ready to bite at a moments notice.

But Ebay won this round, they fought the beast back! After pulling their ads;
which meant millions of dollars for Google; Google backed down.

Perhaps they aren’t invincible after all.

Only time will tell, but established companies and services such as Ebay and
Flickr seem to be safe from Google. But they conquered search, they conquered
maps… they are on the way to changing the way we do documents and Spreadsheets
(I’m writing this in Google Docs). The sky is the limit for Google.

Source: Computer World

Tags: internet //