Almost one year after the announcement of a billion dollar advertising agreement, eBay is pulling out all of its advertising off of Google’s search results and AdSense host pages.
This confrontation began after Google decided it would host a party Thursday night in Boston, where eBay had set up a party of its own (Live! 2007). eBay pulled its advertising shortly thereafter, and Google responded by canceling its party on Thursday. After hearing of the party, they evidently tried to rent the restaurant out from under Google, prior to Google’s cancellation.
Google’s party was meant to promote Google Checkout, a direct competitor to eBay’s Paypal service. Publicly, eBay announced that it was dropping the ad purchases as part of a “routine test” of marketing options. Whatever the case is, eBay ads seem to be gone for the time being, and Google has lost one big advertiser (and perhaps a few million dollars) until they clear this up.
