Like many companies--Yahoo and Amazon come to mind--eBay once viewed Google as a partner. Now, the online auctioneer is viewing the search giant as one of its biggest threats. To say the least,
the relationship between the companies has grown strained, says The San Jose Mercury News. Not only does Google's search engine direct users to e-commerce sites other than eBay, the search
giant has now has its own competing ecommerce services, Froogle and Google Base. Recently, Google announced it would let users set up an account from which they can purchase items on Google's sites,
taking aim at eBay's PayPal, an online payment service that accounts for 23 percent of its revenue. What's eBay to do? Fight back--by partnering with Microsoft or Yahoo to sell ads on its sites. That
said, Microsoft just announced an online classifieds service of its own. Who can you trust out there? Everyone seems to be gunning for everyone else in this business while wanting to partner up at the
same time. You'd think another way for eBay to fight back would be to stop buying so many ads on Google's search engine, but that wouldn't necessarily help either, since eBay depends on getting so
much of its traffic from Google.
Read the whole story at San Jose Mercury News »