Throwing eBay's rattle out of Google's pram

15/06/2007 at 15:16

So, the Google story. Because this all kicked off while I was slogging from Brittany to Boston via Gatwick and Minnesota (and we’ll save that horror story for another post), I missed much of the to and fro. However, the BBC itself is now covering the story, which goes something like this. Google advertised a “let freedom ring” party in Boston, to coincide with the keynote speech last night. eBay pulled all their advertising from Google: they’re Google’s biggest customer, spending an estimated US$25million a year on keywords.

eBay’s spokesman Hani Durzy said that this was “part of an ongoing experiment to look at how we market across all media channels”, though he admitted that eBay were disappointed in the Google party plans: “we don’t view that kind of activity as an appropriate activity for one partner to do to another.”

Though the party was, in the end, cancelled, eBay’s paid ads are (at time of writing) still missing from Google. Normally affiliates would step into the breach, but as of June 1st, eBay.com affiliates were no longer allowed to use paid search advertising. While eBay and Google have their hissy fits, this is costing sellers visibility, and more importantly, money.