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Google Accidently Revealed As eBay Critic

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the that-was-some-other-search-site dept.

Xiroth writes "In what could cause an escalation of tensions between the two internet giants, an anonymous critique of eBay's upcoming move to accepting only PayPal as the payment method in Australia has accidently been revealed to have been submitted by Google thanks to PDF meta-tags."

41 of 259 comments (clear)

  1. Heh by dreamchaser · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think it's funny that the PDF dissapeared shortly after the discovery, only to be reposted with the incriminating metadata stripped out hours later. That's pretty brazen since the cat was already out of the bag.

    Did anyone NOT think that Google astroturfs like all the rest? They just got busted at it is all.

    1. Re:Heh by elnico · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If you pay attention, you'll notice that the "brazen reposting" was done by the ACC, not Google.

      And I don't see this as astroturfing. Posting anonymously is different from posting under a fake identity. Not to mention they're both tangential to whether or not Google has a point in their submission.

    2. Re:Heh by hansraj · · Score: 4, Funny

      That's pretty brazen since the cat was already out of the bag. So did someone finally figure out whether it was dead or alive?
    3. Re:Heh by Faylone · · Score: 5, Funny

      maybe.

    4. Re:Heh by Mr.+Bad+Example · · Score: 4, Funny

      > So did someone finally figure out whether it was dead or alive?

      Well...yes and no.

    5. Re:Heh by mwvdlee · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I guess the enemy of my enemy (and eBay is every law-abiding citizens' enemy) is my friend, so in my eyes Google still does no evil.

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    6. Re:Heh by niko9 · · Score: 4, Funny

      That's pretty brazen since the cat was already out of the bag. So did someone finally figure out whether it was dead or alive? African or European cat?

    7. Re:Heh by ikkonoishi · · Score: 4, Funny

      We always knew it was dead or alive.

    8. Re:Heh by Shatrat · · Score: 4, Informative

      Astroturf.
      I do not think it means what you think it means.
      They aren't advertising anonymously.
      Google is criticizing an anti-competitive move that will hurt consumers as well as Google and pretty much everyone other than Ebay.
      If they want to do so anonymously because they have advertising accounts with ebay, I don't see anything sinister about that.

      --
      09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
    9. Re:Heh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's not astroturfing. The circumstances are so far from any conception of astroturfing that it's not funny. Claims to the contrary demonstrate ignorance.

      It is an official submission to the Australian competition authority (the ACCC). Anonymity is provided where there are legitimate reasons for providing it (for example another company that fears retaliation should their opposition to the proposal become known). Legitimacy is determined by the ACCC. The ACCC knows the identity of the submitter and is the only party that matters in making a decision. The submission is not attempting to influence the public (as with astroturfing) - they are making legal arguments to determine whether or not the ACCC should grant eBay immunity from the Trade Practices Act.

    10. Re:Heh by bit01 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And I don't see this as astroturfing. Posting anonymously is different from posting under a fake identity.

      Bullshit. It's posting in a way that's intended to deceive the reader into thinking the message is by an average citizen and not paid propaganda. It's fraud.

      Astroturfers are lying scum and should be in jail.

      Companies should have no right of anonymity and it's about time the law caught up with them. All communication by corporate entities should be clearly identified as such. Corporations have a privileged legal position and with that privilege comes responsibility. In particular, transparency and accountability.

      Think it doesn't matter? It does, or they wouldn't do it.

      Corporate tools will claim that readers will not give them a fair hearing if they post under the corporate name. Well hello, guess why. If corporations were trustworthy they wouldn't have a problem.

      Others will claim that the message should be evaluated independent of the messenger. Self serving nonsense, context is very important in evaluating the veracity of a message.

      ---

      Paid marketers are the worst zealots.

    11. Re:Heh by Pseudonym · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It's posting in a way that's intended to deceive the reader into thinking the message is by an average citizen and not paid propaganda. It's fraud.

      Bullshit. Nobody has accused Google of hiding their identity from the ACCC, who are the ones who have to make the decision. The ACCC just removed Google's identity from the public record.

      Moreover, nobody is accusing anyone of lying about who Google's submission came from.

      Think it doesn't matter? It does, or they wouldn't do it.

      Actually, we know exactly why Google wanted the submission to be anonymous to the public, and it had nothin to do with fraud.

      The ACCC inquiry, if you recall, is to determine whether or not eBay should be granted an exemption from Australian trade practices law so that they can require everyone to use PayPal on eBay Australia. Everyone knows that eBay is using Australia as an experiment to see if they can get away with imposing this on the rest of the world, too. Google Checkout is in direct competition with PayPal elsewhere, but not in Australia yet.

      Google wanted to submit anonymously to avoid hard questions about whether or not they were planning to roll out Google Checkout in Australia any time soon. To their credit, Google has been very up-front about this since the story broke.

      (Disclaimer: I am not connected with Google, but it was a close family member of mine who "discovered" the PDF metadata.)

      --
      sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
    12. Re:Heh by pclminion · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Bullshit. It's posting in a way that's intended to deceive the reader into thinking the message is by an average citizen and not paid propaganda. It's fraud. Astroturfers are lying scum and should be in jail.

      People should be jailed for speaking anonymously? Exactly which Godwin reference were you shooting for?

  2. I can also produce a pdf with the same title by poeidon1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    so does it really prove that the document came from Google? Of course, they might be the one but who knows...

    --
    They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me. -Nathaniel Lee
    1. Re:I can also produce a pdf with the same title by dotancohen · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why do you people on slashdot keep on repeating the same sentences, are you Bor You must be new here.
      --
      It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
    2. Re:I can also produce a pdf with the same title by Televiper2000 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It's also possible that it was written by someone within the ranks of Google who isn't officially representing his corporate masters. I'm wondering of Google hasn't already submitted something similar officially. They have both the interest and credentials to do so.

      --
      New! Device Legs: These legs will help your poor OEM installed product escape any hamfistedness it may encounter. Ava
    3. Re:I can also produce a pdf with the same title by LaughingCoder · · Score: 3, Funny

      Maybe Dan Rather produced it.

      --
      The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
    4. Re:I can also produce a pdf with the same title by PIBM · · Score: 5, Informative

      Did you actually RTFA ? Google provided the governement with a document (original form is unknown, as the governement can save it as a doc, if you'd have seen the title you'd understand) and the 'watchdogs' made a pdf out of that document, which used the original government provided filename as the title.

  3. Re:Good. by robot_lords_of_tokyo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How is it unethical to use your own checkout system? Is it also unethical for a merchant to accept Visa and deny my very own Bongo card?

  4. Re:Good. by GoodbyeBlueSky1 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Exactly, I don't see what the problem is. Google is the bad guy after calling out eBay for blatantly abusing their monopoly power? Who cares if they were trying to do so "anonymously"? Doesn't change the facts.

    --
    why? forty-two.
  5. Re:Well done google. by robot_lords_of_tokyo · · Score: 5, Funny

    Because google is using word to submit their semi anonymous critiques... shameful shameful

  6. RTFA by IronMagnus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For all of you saying this was Google's mess up... please RTFA:

    The Australian competition watchdog has accidentally revealed Google as the anonymous source of a submission that is highly critical of eBay's proposal to force its users onto the PayPal payments system.

    Google didn't mess up, the watchdogs did.

    1. Re:RTFA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      by Anonymous Coward on Sat May 31, 09:44 AM (#23610437)

      The mess up was trying to be anonymous in the first place. What else are they hiding?



      I don't know... you tell me, Mr. Anonymous Coward.

  7. Re:Does anybody still use eBay? by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It has to me, twice. Once as seller once as buyer.

    I got the 'confirmation' from PayPal. I got the guaranteed address. I shipped with a tracking #. The CC was stolen. No matter. PayPal deducted an instant $900 from my account because of some wording loophole.

    $2k G5 3 years ago. Opposite situation. I was the seller. Seller was long gone but Hurray for Paypal. They were able to 'recover' $150. (This prompted me to get a credit card so if anything ever did go wrong I would have full recourse through Visa)

  8. PayPal requires caution by sjbe · · Score: 5, Informative

    And in any case, what's the big deal with using Paypal? Sure, I've heard the horror stories, but fortunately nothing like that has ever happened to me as a seller, so there ya go. Give it time and you'll experience some of the horrors first hand. The main problems with PayPal from the standpoint a seller is that their policies make it pretty easy for buyers to abuse you and PayPal is rather expensive as well. I've sold over 10,000 items on eBay and received most payments via PayPal. 99% of the time it works well even if it is overly pricey for the service provided - but PayPal's policies are heavily tilted towards favoring buyers and you should NEVER forget that.

    Eventually you'll run into someone who decides they don't like something and the magic words with PayPal are "not as described" - it doesn't matter how accurately you actually did describe it since PayPal does not check or even care. Anyone can return anything, regardless of your policy on returns and get a full refund - screwing you out of the shipping price in the process. (accepting returns is usually a good policy but not in all cases) Worse, sometimes the "buyer" will ship you a box with nothing in it (keeping the item) and PayPal will give them their money back as soon as they provide "proof" of shipping. As for PayPal's seller's "protection", it's nearly worthless and PayPal puts so many stipulations in that they can basically weasel out anytime they want to. (and believe me they do)

    PayPal wants to be a bank without being regulated like one. They also implement a lot of poorly thought out policies that could only be fair if they could/would inspect the merchandise - but they don't and never will. I don't have a problem with their service overall but it should be used with a strong dose of caveat emptor.
    1. Re:PayPal requires caution by Nixoloco · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actually, I think caveat venditor is more appropriate, considering your description of paypal.

    2. Re:PayPal requires caution by sjbe · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You mean you were weren't offering a full refund, or you weren't offering returns? Dude, What kind of sham operation were you running? There are lots of cases where no returns is appropriate and there is NOTHING ethically wrong with a no returns policy as long as it is disclosed up front. No one HAS to buy from you and with a no returns policy you should expect to get less money given the risk the buyer is taking. Lots of real world vendors do it every day. If you don't like the policy, don't buy from that vendor.

      Certain types of clothing is an obvious case where a no refund policy (think used underwear... ick) is highly appropriate. Likewise second hand, already opened software or music is another. There are also situations like selling items on consignment where it is impractical to offer a return policy due to insufficient margins. But even beyond all that, if a vendor wants to sell something with a no return policy that is their right just as it is your right not to buy from them.

      Nobody expects you to be walmart (though many Americans think that?) and take broken crap back, but if the item hasn't even been opened, you should be taking it back and deducting the shipping fee. Actually buyers DO expect you to be Wal*Mart and that's the problem. If the seller actually got the shipping fee back on returns that would be fine but with PayPal they do not. PayPal does NOT refund shipping EVER. As a seller I am NOT willing to eat a $10 to $100 shipping fee (depending on the item being shipped) just so someone can on a whim decide they don't like something. That's a fast way to lose a ton of money. Furthermore I've experience countless cases where someone shipped back merchandise they broke (not the carrier) and PayPal gave them their money back without the slightest effort to verify the condition of the merchandise. Wal*Mart makes billions and can afford to accept returns for any reason. That rarely describes sellers on eBay.

      "Bad buying experience" is caused entirely by sellers who want an easy way to ditch customer service in favor of keeping more of the profit Try actually running a real business someday before making such a ridiculous statement. "More profit"? Try ANY profit. It is extremely difficult to make ANY profit selling on eBay. A no questions asked return policy on top of 7-10% eBay/PayPal fees and non-reimbursed shipping costs is a good way to go out of business fast. Furthermore there are at LEAST as many scummy buyers as there are scummy sellers on eBay. I've seen every scam in the book first hand as a seller and you're going to tell me it's all the sellers fault? You have no idea what you are talking about.
  9. Time for google to step up by ArchieBunker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They have a payment system and the technical capabilities, time for Google Auctions. Fuck ebay.

    --
    Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
  10. Re:Good. by Fjandr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's not unethical. What is unethical is not allowing users to use any other form of payment (aside from COD). Why would an online merchant who already has a merchant gateway (credit card processing) account have to pay PayPal's ridiculous fees? There is absolutely zero technical reason for the prohibition, and aside from check/MO/cashier's check fraud, adds zero to the overall safety of transactions.

    They are the defacto monopoly in the online auction space, and are using that weight to shut out competitors in another market (payment processing.)

  11. Re:Good. by Mistshadow2k4 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I don't know about unethical, but it definitely is anti-competitive. eBay does have a monopoly in the online auction business. That there are other online auction businesses is little different than MS saying they're not a monopoly because of Apple. So, that the move is anti-competitive would have a good chance of standing up in court. If eBay thinks they're so powerful that this needn't concern them, I'd say that's pretty arrogant; Google may be the search giant rather than the online-pay giant, but they're still pretty powerful.

    --
    I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
  12. pdf file created from MS Word doc? by hansraj · · Score: 4, Interesting
    From TFA:

    Translated it means that the PDF was created from a Microsoft Word document with the filename "204481916_1_ACCC Submission by Google re eBay Public _2_.DOC". Didn't Google use a version of Ubuntu internally? Probably not a real question given the size of Google but nevertheless...
  13. Re:Does anybody still use eBay? by CrashNBrn · · Score: 3, Informative

    In places like Canada, and Australia you can do free bank transfers without resorting to WesternUnion. Which makes utilizing things like payPal just an added expense.

  14. Google has hated ebay for awhile.... by WGFCrafty · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's coming up on two years since the slashdot article announcing that Ebay bans Google checkout payments.

    I'd be pissed too if Ebay pretty much implied that shitty little companies like propay.com can handle high dollar business transactions better.

    Of course the lack of features or policies is probably not the reason at at all. Paypal is probably just scared of having it's market share shoot straight through the floor.

  15. Re:RTFA^2 by Fastolfe · · Score: 3, Informative

    Also from "TFA":

    An ACCC spokeswoman said the ACCC had received the document from the parties in a PDF form for posting on the public register in that format.

    She said it was not the ACCC's responsibility to check that all the identifiers had been stripped out because the parties insisted it was fine.

    I read this as saying Google provided the "anonymized" PDF, and the ACCC said, "OK," and posted it. This would make it Google's error.

  16. Mod parent up by Boss+Sauce · · Score: 3, Informative

    Way too much sketchiness and outright fraud on eBay-- they seemed to stop engineering the system years ago.

    I bet a few Google engineers have thought of this and at least a few have thrown a little 20% time at this isue...

  17. My eBay feedback 1000, still rooting for Google by Nova+Express · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As someone who has bought and sold science fiction first editions on eBay for nigh on a decade now, and who currently has eBay feedback over 1000, I hope that this finally spurs Google to launch an eBay auction competitor to eat eBay's lunch. (Or, as you newfangled kids say these days when you're not getting the hell off my lawn, I hope Google drinks eBay's milkshake.)

    The reason is that eBay has gone from being bringing buyers and sellers together to treating them like pinatas to be beaten with a stick to extract the maximum amount of money from them. Fees have only gone up, the changes made to feedback have been asinine, and eBay has let their core auction business language while they've been trying to turn themselves into an inferior clone of Amazon.

    It's gotten so bad that I've reduced my listings by 98% since the new fee structure was announced (and most of the remaining 2% are books another writer asked me to sell on eBay on consignment)> It's simply insufficiently profitable for me to deal there anymore.

    Since Google already has the infrastructure in place, I hope they come out with a Google Auctions, radically undercut eBay's fee structure (free for the first two years might do it), and either make eBay's repent or else drive them under entirely.

    Why not? Certainly Google has enough computing infrastructure to run an auction business as big as eBay's without even noticing the loading, and I know they're smart enough to create an auction system from scratch.

    Lawrence Person
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    1. Re:My eBay feedback 1000, still rooting for Google by zippthorne · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Indeed, the infrastructure is already there.

      But, we really just need a web-host with a number of decent templates for various items, and a strict classifying scheme to promote good searching. The "auction" bit is a nice gimmick, but search capabilities are more useful.

      For instance, you shouldn't have to do a text search for laptops and manually filter out all the laptop accessories. You should be able to drill down your requirements until what remains is a number of laptops that meet your requirements with varying prices and optional stuff that might help your decision, but isn't strictly necessary.

      eBay doesn't even do this very well and that's their core business. The auction bit is a nice gimmick, and has some utility in establishing market price for items you're not sure about, but an improved version of craigslist (even one where you pay for the listings) would be an eBay killer.

      --
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  18. Anonymous to avoid ad-hominem by mlwmohawk · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The problem with Google's posting of an opinion, that many probably agree with, is that the use of ad-hominem is so prevalent and accepted that, these days, it is impossible to state something factual and verifiable, or reasonable and well thought out, without it being automatically colored by what people's perceptions of your motives might be.

    People have just given up even attempting to think. They judge quickly based on sound bites and prejudices, they no longer contemplate the validity of an argument before forming an opinion.

  19. Re:Good. by jlarocco · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The definition of "monopoly" is not "large and popular". There are thousands of online auction sites. There are no barriers to entry into the online auction field. Any "web developer" worth the title could hack together a functional auction site in a couple days. The only downside is those other sites don't have as many users as eBay, but there are ways around that if you really dislike eBay.

    If you keep using eBay, even though you think they're doing something wrong, how will they know you disagree with them? In fact, if you keep using them, they don't even care what you think. Making PayPal mandatory and seeing a 10% decrease in revenue means something. Making PayPal mandatory and having a bunch of people cry doesn't.

    Unless you own a lot of eBay stock, you don't get to decide how they run their business. Your only options are "Use eBay" or "Don't use eBay".

    It's kinda funny how every day people on here whine that companies only care about money, yet everybody avoids using it against the companies like we're supposed to.

    --
    Maybe not
  20. Re:Good. by Fjandr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    De facto: in actuality, if not actual legal definition. Market share is a key indicator of monopoly status. Using that market share to create an artificial barrier to entry (into payment processing, not auction sites) is an abuse of that status.

    To put it another way, requiring use of PayPal could easily be argued to amount to unlawful bundling of a service that is not strictly necessary to eBay's auction business.

    Granted this is all from a US legal standpoint, rather than an Australian one.

  21. Network effects by sjbe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The definition of "monopoly" is not "large and popular". There are thousands of online auction sites. There are no barriers to entry into the online auction field. EBay has one of the most formidable barriers to entry there is, namely network effects. Sellers go to eBay because that is where the buyers are and vice-versa. The barriers to entry if you want to compete with eBay are HUGE. Amazon.com and Yahoo both tried and failed miserably to make a dent in eBay's auction business and they have all the capital and IT talent necessary already. Like it or not, eBay has a de-facto monopoly on online auctions to the same extent Microsoft has one on operating systems.

    The only downside is those other sites don't have as many users as eBay, but there are ways around that if you really dislike eBay. That's pretty much the one disadvantage that actually matters. The ENTIRE point of a marketplace is to bring buyers and sellers together. No one brings more buyers and sellers together than eBay - in fact there isn't even a close second. As someone who has conducted over 10,000 online auctions let me tell you, if you want to use any site other than eBay except for very specialized items (like guns) even if you sell your item at all off eBay you aren't likely to get a good price or many interested buyers.