eBay Looking for Allies Against Google

Vitaly Friedman writes "A report in the Wall Street Journal today talks about how eBay is looking for partners to defend against the growing threat of Google. Specifically, Google Base and the payment system in the works in Mountain View are seen as possible dangers to eBay's auctions and PayPal payment operations, says the report. Google Talk just throws some salt in the wounds by looking for a toehold in Skype's turf."

Shouldn't be hard.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft and Yahoo and AOL are obvious partners they could work with if they really see those as friendlier than Google

Re:I remember

[Feminist-Mom]

Actually he said something like "Will Big Blue dominate the entire computer industry... the entire information age, was George Orwell right about 1984?"

I think it was kinda linked to the commercial.

Re:I for one welcome our Google payment overlords

[Rob T Firefly]

I have no idea why PayPal seems so hokey... Is it the name?

Apart from the usual barrage of reasons to not like paypal [paypalsucks.com], they are hokey in exactly the same way as an AOL email. Anyone can get one, no technical or professional qualifications needed. It's impossible to seem in any way ahead of your competition with a system that a teenager can sign up for in ten minutes.

Google, Destoryer of Dreams

[Duncan3]

Here in Silicon Valley, the most often spoken line is now "We would fund your company, it's brilliant, but Google would just copy it, so no."

Google doesnt even have to do anything anymore... the fear of Google is killing the whole tech industry. They are the online version of Walmart, crushing every business within their grasp, and forcing everyone to play by their rules.

Just ask any online business not on page 1 of a search result, if you can find one that's still in business that is.

Anything Google even might possibly copy, isn't happening at all, just like Microsoft used to do - and did very well. Google will crush everyone just as effectively in the end.

Re:I hope Google shit on ebay

[damiangerous]

Possibly because having multiple active accounts is against ebay's terms of service.... :)

No, it's not. In fact it's explicitly mentioned as acceptable [ebay.com].

Re:Paypal alternative?

[NormalVisual]

From https://www.google.com/adsense/policies [google.com], since you so nicely asked:

Site Content

Site may not include:

* Excessive profanity
* Violence, racial intolerance, or advocate against any individual, group, or organization
* Hacking/cracking content
* Illicit drugs and drug paraphernalia
* Pornography, adult, or mature content
* Gambling or casino-related content

...and a bunch of other stuff...

Now granted, this is for their AdSense program and not for AdWords, but it still points to an inconsistent application of what they do and don't find acceptable. I'm not allowed to run porn or gambling ads via AdSense on my own site, but Google apparently has no problem running them on the main search results.

An example of a gambling site that can be found in Google's search results is here [chipvault.com]. It's free to play, but don't think for a moment that they're not attracting traffic by virtue of the opportunity to win $10,000 in their "tournament", which is still gambling in spirit at the very least.