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Google Businesses The Internet The Almighty Buck

eBay and Google Make Amends, Kinda 44

Posted by Zonk from the best-of-cuthroat-enemies dept.
It's been tit for tat for some time; eBay bans Google payments, Google tries to throw a party mocking eBay, in response to which the service pulls all of its ads, fun corporate shenanigans. It seems as though, for the moment, the two companies have made up. News.com is reporting that eBay ads will once again be serviced via Google's adwords service, but that they will also be using alternative methods to a greater extent in the future. "Hani Durzy, a spokesman for San Jose, California-based eBay, said his company later on Friday would begin advertising on Google, but at reduced levels than previously. eBay had been buying tens of millions of keyword ads on Google each year. 'I will tell you it will be in a much more limited way than it was before,' Durzy told Reuters. 'What we found is that we were not as dependent on AdWords as some people thought.'"
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eBay and Google Make Amends, Kinda More

eBay and Google Make Amends, Kinda

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  • Some people thought? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Saturday June 23, 2007 @04:29PM (#19622559) Journal
    Who thought eBay was dependant on AdWords at all? How many people:
    1. Use Google, but have never heard of eBay, or
    2. Are going to be interested in buying random words (e.g. 'slaves') on eBay? They even had the AdWords for my name for a while, but sadly they didn't sell a spare one of me.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by gravos ( 912628 )
      Certainly it's pretty funny when we type something like "pidgin problem" into Google and see "Find pidgin problem now on eBay!" But when you look at search queries it's definitively true that a non-trivial number of them are for products, and probably people looking to buy. Besides, if eBay only pays through click-thrus, why would they care if there are false-positives?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by EggyToast ( 858951 )
      Hear hear. The ebay adwords were always the bottom of the barrel -- either words that no one else wanted, or that were moderately popular but eBay had paid so little that they were listed last.

      It's sad, though, that I didn't even realize they were missing until this article came out. Sure enough, I can't think of a search in recent memory that had "Find it on eBay!" in google ads. Too bad, really; I wish I could've been more pleased with their absence.

    • Re:Some people thought? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Ignis Flatus ( 689403 ) on Saturday June 23, 2007 @04:46PM (#19622679)
      dependent is such a strong word. it's like asking if walmart is dependent on local newspapers to sell goods. of course, everyone has heard of walmart, but running ads still brings in more customers and reduces sales to competitors. they may not be dependent on them, but they still need the ads to establish dominance. without dominance, you leave open the possibility that a competitor will one day take away a large piece of your pie. perhaps the whole pie.
    • Yes but what about the organic search results , when I search for something I generally see some ebay pages , what is google changes its algoritm to get rid of store pages.
    • If eBay does reduce it's pointless ads, that do not represent even a remote product available, that can only be a good thing for Google and AdWords as a program. If eBay also would stop spamming the search results with auctions that are outdated or search results that are, again, not resulting in any available product at the time (Http Expire header any one?) it would be a good thing for Google as well as for the searching public. Third, if all the front ends for Google would not cloak the Google search r

  • Good riddance (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23, 2007 @04:40PM (#19622649)
    I say good riddance to EBay's crappy Google ads. For a while there, you couldn't search for anything without 3 EBay affiliate ads offering to sell it to you. "Find people selling 'babies' on EBay!" "Lowest prices on 'babies'!"

    • Re:Good riddance (Score:5, Funny)

      by owlnation ( 858981 ) on Saturday June 23, 2007 @05:23PM (#19622911)

      I say good riddance to EBay's crappy Google ads. For a while there, you couldn't search for anything without 3 EBay affiliate ads offering to sell it to you. "Find people selling 'babies' on EBay!" "Lowest prices on 'babies'!"
      Ironically, eBay's Safeharbor team does such a poor job that there are most certainly days when you actually can, in fact, buy babies on eBay.

      However, I daresay the "lowest prices" part is misleading. If eBay scammers are selling babies, they are almost certainly shill bidding on them too.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ciscoguy01 ( 635963 )
      Yep. Everything you searched for with google came up with *lots* of worthless eBay hits.
      Good riddance eBay.
      Worthless, eBay was essentially spamming google, and google didn't seem concerned at all.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Good. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Triv ( 181010 ) on Saturday June 23, 2007 @04:43PM (#19622661) Journal

    Good for me, anyway - adwords on google searches for anything even remotely purchasable almost always included a generic, keyword-added eBay ad that was ignorable by default; it was approaching crapflood levels.

    Let's hope that eBay pulling back will result in searches that're actually relevant. (Searching for Anime and being told that an anime sale is going on at foo.com makes sense; being told that I can buy anime on eBay is unnecessary.)


    Triv

  • If they weren't that dependant on AdWords (Score:4, Insightful)

    by king-manic ( 409855 ) on Saturday June 23, 2007 @04:45PM (#19622677)
    Why did they go back? I think they were more dependant then they thought and went back in a more limited fashion to protest their dependence.

  • Sounds like a pre-divorce situation (Score:5, Funny)

    by fishthegeek ( 943099 ) on Saturday June 23, 2007 @04:59PM (#19622775) Journal
    Wife: I don't like it when you do (this) so I'm going to cut you off.
    Husband: Oh yeah, well I'm going to have a beer with guys on your birthday.
    Wife: Oh yeah well I'm going to ask my mother to move in.
    Husband: Oh yeah! Well I'm going to let you.

    Both think about it for a minute.

    Wife, well maybe we can uh, you know work things out a little bit.
    Husband: Well maybe. Have you seen my socks?

    There is tremendous interdependency between an awful lot of web companies and to spite themselves they're going to have to play nice in the sandbox if they are going to get anything done.

  • Which is Worse? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Saturday June 23, 2007 @06:23PM (#19623419)
    Which is worse? Pulling all eBay ads from Google, or the GDP (Google Death Penalty) of making you effectively disappear from the Internet. There's no Must Carry rule for Google, although they need do this sparingly, lest they become irrelevant in the search market. But eBay is only one company, and an arrogant one at that based on the number of legal items they ban from being sold, and the way they can suspend your seller account based on unverified complaints. eBay can hardly bring down Google.

    Come to think of it, both eBay and Google are a lot alike. Both pull your sites/listings based on often unverified complaints, then make it d@mn near impossible to actually talk to somebody who can rectify the situation and have you reinstated. They deserve each other!

  • Come on now major corporations... play nice.
  • lets just see how long does it take google to enter the online retail bussiness. they did it with paypal they will soon do it with ebay.

  • Right... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jaqenn ( 996058 ) on Saturday June 23, 2007 @06:49PM (#19623581)
    From the summary:

    'What we found is that we were not as dependent on AdWords as some people thought.'"

    Which translates as 'We found that we're way the hell more dependent on AdWords than we thought', right? They went back to Google in, what, 5 days?
  • Aww, Google and eBay got back together again after their little lover's quarrel. I think it's a good thing that this made them realize they are not ready for their previous level of commitment and that they made it clear that it is o.k. for each other to see other corporations too.

  • "Kinda" is right (Score:3, Informative)

    by hendridm ( 302246 ) on Saturday June 23, 2007 @09:13PM (#19624483) Homepage
    If given the choice between:

    a) Not seeing as many eBay ads on Google, or
    b) Being able to use Google Checkout on eBay

    I'd choose B.

  • Google Payments? Who cares. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Yvan256 ( 722131 ) on Saturday June 23, 2007 @11:50PM (#19625275) Homepage Journal
    Google Payments only works in the USA, the UK.... not sure where else.

    As a Canadian, Google Payments are 100% useless to me (both as a buyer and a seller).

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