eBay, Google Shaking Hands again

September 29th, 2008 | by Vineet |

Recently eBay pulled its hands off Google Adwords but the online auctioneer has set its issues aside and returned to the pay-per-click program.

“We are now slowly turning AdWords back on, in a much more limited way than before,” eBay said.

eBay said it will continue to work with Google, Yahoo, AOL, MSN and other of its potential partners so as to reach the potential buyers and accelerate the business.

According to eBay the time away from Google was a test of other potentially strong advertising alternatives namely Yahoo, AOL & MSN.

“The test we began last week was successful,” eBay said “We found that we were not as dependent on Google AdWords as some may have thought. By reallocating our marketing dollars to our other partners, we were able to increase traffic and find efficiencies that will enable us to drive more value to our sellers and partners going forward.”
So now company plans to continue with other advertising options but just Google.

What actually happened
The problem aroused when Google planned up a party aimed to the vendors of ebay to pressurize the auction website to accept Google Checkout (a payment method of Google) whereas eBay strongly recommends that its users should use its Paypal (a payment method by eBay).
This resulted in eBay canceling itself from the AdWord program.

“That tactic — trying to siphon traffic from a competitor during their venue — has been used in the industry a lot, but it’s not very classy,” Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies, told the E-Commerce Times.

Making Up??
Before the problems started eBay was the biggest Adwords customer in U.S. according to both comScore and Nielsen.
eBay very soon came into the senses & figured out that this clash could lead to the downfall of both the companies.

Among large technology companies today, it’s rare to have relationships that are purely competitive, Kay noted. “They have to figure out how to manage that”.
Without cooperating, Google loses advertising revenue, while eBay loses a venue for its advertising, Kay said, so it’s in both their interests to make the relationship work.
Whatever happened is done but eBay made a point with all that to Google saying that “Don’t take us for granted”

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