Google Checkout ownz ur $$$$ and a tiff with eBay
When I was in primary school there was another little girl who’s birthday was around the same day as mine. (Who said Aries are competitive? pfft.) Instead of being friends, we came to hate each other because it was always a competition to see who in class was buddies with whom. “You can’t go to…
When I was in primary school there was another little girl who’s birthday was around the same day as mine. (Who said Aries are competitive? pfft.) Instead of being friends, we came to hate each other because it was always a competition to see who in class was buddies with whom. “You can’t go to her party, you’re my friend, you have to come to mine!!” *tantrum* Oh the Tears! the Drama! The Heartbreak! Thankfully it stopped when we reached 30. 🙂 So I completely commiserate with eBay, the poor loves.
eBay yanks ads from Google AdWords network
Online auctioneer eBay has pulled its advertising from search company Google’s AdWords network in the United States, an eBay spokesman said on Wednesday.
“This is part of an ongoing experiment to look at how we market across all media channels,” said eBay spokesman Hani Durzy.
AdWords is Google’s advertising system that shows ads based on words in Web searches and is the source of virtually all of Google’s revenues.
Technology trade publication Computerworld, which originally reported the move, cited a source as saying it was in response to Google’s decision to hold a party starting at the same time as an eBay conference for merchants who sell on its site.
The Google event, called the Checkout Freedom Party, is part of an effort to lobby eBay to accept its online payment system, known as Checkout, which competes with eBay’s PayPal.
Durzy acknowledged that eBay was disappointed about the Google event. “We don’t view that kind of activity as an appropriate activity for one partner to do to
another.”
Bloody right Durzy! I suggest you get the attendee list for Google’s little shindig and don’t invite those merchants to any more parties. And stick ’em on a secret ‘second-best’ friends list. BTW, thank you ZDNet, corporate gossip magazine extraordinaire. 😛
So what’s it really all about then? I think it could be summed up in this graphic.
See the shopping cart next to participatingstore.com? This is a standard sponsored link that comes up on a standard search. The shopping cart indicates that the store accepts online payment – from Google Checkout, mind you, not eBay’s PayPal.
Must be nice owning the world’s major search engine AND the payment method. No wonder eBay is miffed. I guess Google’s tagline Don’t Be Evil means Don’t Be Evil to People but Do What Thy Wilt To Business. Sucks to be any of the big boys at the moment though. Even the barest whisper of a Google mobile phone has telcos, apple iPhone, Microsoft mobile, symbian whoever/whatever heading for cover… Not that I personally care… it’s all good from where I’m sitting. I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords. (Hooked on researching snowclones at the moment)
Incidentally, that sort of raiding of another’s social network is really really frowned upon by the whole network. I wrote about Netscape posting all over the place (and pissing off DIGG) inviting people to leave the host network and migrate their blogs to them, and paying them. Not sure how it worked out for them, but I suspect not brilliantly. Because kids often post up “leave these gaming forums and come to mine”, when companies do it, it’s seen as pretty immature. And experience has taught most social networkers that anyone being so rude to an online community host probably has a really bad attitude to it’s members too. Not sure if I’m being clear.
But then again, you can only get people to leave one party/service/company/social network and join your shindig/social network/event if the first one is totally sucky. In which case they were probably going to leave anyway. Hence the revamp of Facebook – build in other social network tools (bebo, myspace) and you’ve a better chance of keeping fickle members. And more polite than posting in Bebo and MySpace “hey this place sucks, come to my site, w00t”. Or however marketing at Facebook would say it.
Speaking of ebay…Not sure if anyone has checked out this site that a friend told me about – called My Hire Site. If not, definitely check it out – http://www.myhiresite.com.au. Its like ebay – except that people actually hire things on the site, rather than having to buy things.