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eBay is BACK Advertising on Google. Yahoo Buying eBay?

June 25th, 2007

Reuters reports that eBay will resume running ads on Google.

Hani Durzy, a spokesman for San Jose, California-based eBay, said his company later on Friday would begin advertising on Google, but at reduced levels than previously. EBay had been buying tens of millions of keyword ads on Google each year.

“I will tell you it will be in a much more limited way than it was before,” Durzy told Reuters. “What we found is that we were not as dependent on AdWords as some people thought.”

Durzy’s comment is interesting. I of course do not know the financials orROI that eBay gets on its Adwords spending but looking at this purely as a battle between two businesses, eBay is looking a whole lot weaker then Google. If what eBay found was that they weren’t as dependant on Adwords as “some peopl” thought, then why are they back advertising again. If I had a rival that I thought was trying to put me out of business and destroy my market share, I sure as hell wouldn’t give them my money to fight me with. eBay had to come out with a statement like this. How else could they not be completely ridiculed for coming back to Google Adwords. What were they going to say?:

<satire>
Hani Durzy, a spokesman for San Jose, California-based eBay, said his company later on Friday would begin advertising on Google after a few day hiatus. EBay had been buying tens of millions of keyword ads on Google each year before their not too well thought out temper tantrum.

“We are back advertising on Google Adwords. We simply found that Yahoo & MSN didn’t provide the types of traffic levels we need to stay afloat as an outdated and overpriced service on the web today” Durzy told Reuters. “What we found is that we were more dependent on AdWords then some people thought. We have decided to play nice with Google so they don’t chew us up and spit us out.”
</satire>

In other news I read an internet stocks blog over the weekend speculating that Semel’s departure from Yahoo strengthens the case that Yahoo will Merge with eBay. Early last week I wrote about how News Corp may be swapping its Myspace for a 25% holding in Yahoo. If Yahoo successfully aqcuires both Myspace and Ebay they will hold 3 of the top 20 spots on Alexa’s most popular sites and a signifigant amount of the webs traffic making them a much more powerful force to be reckoned with. It may not make them any more of a threat to Google as they don’t seem to be concentrating much on search but it will make them one of the most powerful companies on the net (still behind Google) and it is a great strategy for long term survival in a competitive market.

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Entry Filed under: Business, Google, Google Adwords, Search Engines, Yahoo, eBay, eCommerce