As Internet advertising and e-commerce continue to overlap, it's becoming increasingly difficult to understand how eBay and Google can consider themselves partners. Even as Google creates an online
payments and products-listing service, the two companies have found themselves becoming firmer partners in other areas. So what's with this latest partnership?
BusinessWeek speculates that what
drives this unlikely alliance is the apparent recognition that joining forces to complement their shortcomings beats expensive market-share wars. eBay needs ad revenue to complement its settling
international e-commerce business. The company has millions of merchants who would be willing to pay for qualified phone calls; matching buyers and sellers, of course, is Google's expertise. For
Google, click-to-call has yet to really click; the search giant will certainly benefit from eBay's 100 million Skype Net-phone users. Investors loved the move. Both companies' stock prices bumped up
about 2 percent on the news. To be sure, it's odd to think that eBay only just struck an ad partnership with Yahoo a few months ago. Yahoo provides third-party graphical advertising, text advertising
on search results and was supposed to explore click-to-call with eBay. It appears, however, that's been suspended in light of the new deal with Google. As eBay's e-commerce revenues continue to
flatten out, it's clear that advertising will be crucial to the Web company's growth moving forward.
Read the whole story at BusinessWeek »
