As detailed in this Clickz article Last week eBay pulled its advertising on Google Adwords and while their spokesperson claimed it was the result of eBay doing optimization testing and choosing to reallocate their marketing dollars, the blogosphere has another theory.
Google has been pushing it's Google Checkout payment service, which competes with eBay's PayPal. Well eBay wants folks to of course, use PayPal, so they do not allow people to use Google Checkout on eBay. So Google, posted an invitation on their Google Checkout Blog invited eBay sellers attending the eBay Live conference in Boston last week to a party with the theme "Let Freedom Ring" and described the party as a "celebration of user choice."
eBay was not happy about this and pulled all of its advertising on Google, which by some estimates is just under a cool million dollars a day. Google cancelled the party but still has some fence mending to do.
I understand Google wants to promote Google Checkout, but ticking off such an important (and lucrative) partner and advertiser as eBay with such a blatant dig seems like a really bad idea to me. Of course Google has been singularly independent and successful to this point, but as Google branches out its businesses and expands into so many other areas they better getting used to working and playing well with others.
What do you think? Was Google out of line? Or, do you think Google was right to promote Google Checkout this way and eBay should chill out a bit?
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