eBay and Google Make Amends, Kinda

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.'"

Comments

Some people thought?

[TheRaven64]

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:Some people thought?

[gravos]

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:Some people thought?

[EggyToast]

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?

[TheRaven64]

Besides, if eBay only pays through click-thrus, why would they care if there are false-positives? I always click on the stupid eBay ad links. I figure if they're going to do something stupid, they should have to pay for it.

Re:Some people thought?

[Ignis Flatus]

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.

Good riddance

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[owlnation]

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:Good riddance

[ciscoguy01]

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.

Good.

[Triv]

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

[king-manic]

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.

Re:It's not google's fault!

[MyLongNickName]

Keep up the good work, and we will let you have a user account soon! However, you need to work on your spelling... it is entirely too good.

Sounds like a pre-divorce situation

[fishthegeek]

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.

Re:Sounds like a pre-divorce situation

[TheRealMindChild]

Sure. Where would slashdot be without Roland Piquepaille's blog

Re:Sounds like a pre-divorce situation

[Brother Seamus]

The problem with this is that Google should view Ebay as a competitor, not as a spouse. These moves hurt Google's ability to innovate. They have to back off on entering certain new markets to protect their bread and butter ad business.

Try defining your search!

[Nushio]

You could try searching for stuff and adding "-ebay" at the end.

The "-" tells Google what to skip, so if you're looking for something in particular, and keep getting spammed with "BUY!" and "EBAY", just type your term, and add "-buy -ebay".

Re:I was hoping eBay would boycott forever

[lilfields]

Yes, but it is not well known that this is actually how some candidates buy elections.

Which is Worse?

[Nom du Keyboard]

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!

Right...

[Jaqenn]

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?

"Kinda" is right

[hendridm]

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.

[Yvan256]

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).