Google and eBay announced a formation of an advertising alliance.
n a deal between two of the Internet’s most prominent properties, Google Inc. will begin selling advertising on Web auction leader eBay and help buyers quickly ring an online merchant to do business.
The arrangement announced Monday promises to introduce “click-to-call” Web site technology to a broader audience and potentially speed its adoption as a means to more quickly connect online consumers with advertisers. It allows potential buyers to call up sellers by clicking a link in a Web page.
Um… What about Skype? I understand that Google has been using the “Click-to-Call” technology in some of it’s advertising for quite some time, but you would expect that the terms of the arrangement would make mention of using Skype to accomplish that task. And of course, there is an explanation:
Last year, eBay Inc. bought the Internet phone service Skype. Google has its own messaging and voice telephone service, Google Talk. Both services will be used in the partnership, though details were not disclosed.
Talk and Skype to work together? Remember back in the good old days when they were competitors? Ahhh… how quickly things change. One of the more interesting bits in this whole arrangement is that eBay signed with Yahoo! to serve all of eBay’s domestic ads in May. Google will only be serving the ads for the non-domestic sites. Another wrinkle in the agreement is the Paypal/Checkout competition.
Google Checkout was launched under much fanfare as a Paypal killer. Unfortunately for Google, that wasn’t the case. Backlash from retailers over the way that Checkout works has thrown the wrench in the cog and slowed the growth exponentially. What would be interesting would be if eBay would open up their site to the use of Checkout and if Google gave the choice of using Paypal in Checkout. That would certainly shake a few trees in the valley.
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