nice site dude….

If anything your post has prompted me to spend more time on your blog. You’ve written some great stuff…where do you find the time?

however, more to the point: if you really believe in your old business & colleagues, you may find it’s more productive to give them some tough love & honest opinions, rather than defending questionable business strategy or practices.

whether or not you think it’s ethical for people who are pimping Google Checkout to crash the party and try to recruit eBay employees, it’s just simply stupid for eBay to eject them physically — that attracts negative PR, and draws unnecessary attention & sympathy to a competitor. grade = D.

- dave mcclure

(disclaimer: i used to work at PayPal / eBay too from 2001-2004, and i gave them just as much hell when i worked there as i do now

Let me give you another example – right now, on Google, for AdWords, they will list you with a little shopping cart icon if you use Google Checkout. They will not give you that icon if you use PayPal.

However, it is their search engine and they are entitled to set the rules on what checkout service you need to use to get that extra promotion. There is no way at all that Google will give you an icon and say “Uses PayPal”.

By the same token, eBay won’t allow you use Google Checkout on eBay.

Can you use Google in your own store? Sure. Can you use PayPal in your own store? Sure. It is just that *both* competitors refuse to promote the competing payment service on their core site…

eBay solution is slowly becoming just another search engine (an expensive one too). They might have won the skirmish, but they know they will loose the war. It might be time for eBay to get their act together and learn how to play well with others.

If they truly cared about their users we would not be having this conflict in the first place.

alex

@ Will – I agree. But what are the alternatives really? Search is a one-man show. And even if you can get the other channels to replace current volume from Google, the lure of potential additional volume from Google will always be significant. Seems like a tough spot to me.

@ Alex – I agree with Will on this one. Nothing against free markets, but this was an eBay event. And to be clear, eBay has never said that they will allow any service onto the platform…

Alex,

when you throw a dinner party at your home for your family, you probably dont want me to crash that party . . . same case here . . .