eBay, Google settle spat

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 26 June 2007 01:36

Your IT - Home IT

eBay is again using Google's AdWords pay-per-click advertising. The auction giant suspended its use of AdWords around two weeks ago after a Google party was scheduled during eBay's user conference in Boston earlier this month.

Google cancelled the party, which was intended to promote Google Checkout (a payment method eBay sellers could use in place of eBay-owned PayPal), but the damage was done: eBay pulled all its AdSense ads.

Although the companies have kissed and made up, the relationship isn't what it used to be. It seems eBay has used the 'time out' to discover that some of the money in its AdWords budget can be spent elsewhere. Competing web advertising companies such as Yahoo, MSN and AOL are likely to benefit as it reduces the number of AdWords advertisements.

Reuters quoted eBay spokesperson Hani Durzy thus:"I will tell you it will be in a much more limited way than it was before."

"What we found is that we were not as dependent on AdWords as some people thought."

eBay was thought to be the largest AdWords advertiser, contributing an estimated $100 million to Google's revenues.

In one respect, the dispute has been a blessing for users as irrelevant eBay ads no longer appear alongside Google search results.