eBay vs. Google - What if…
If you’re a fan of high drama, how can you not be excited to see something like this hit the wire?! First of all, that a company finally had the moxie and rocks of titanium to stand up to the big G is awesomeness at it’s finest. Something in me almost wishes that Google came back with righteous anger and a very large hammer (erasing eBay from it’s organic search indexing). So why did I secretly hope for all out open warfare between the two internet giants? Simple, to take us all to the next level, to innovate so to speak….
Dream with me for a minute that eBay pulled it’s $1.2B advertising budget from Google and in retaliation GOOG erased eBay from it’s natural search listings. What kind of effect would this have on the net?
1. eBay would have to find a way to replace this traffic for fear of dropping revenue numbers and overall extinction. Think of the innovation that this would inspire at the auction powerhouse. Instead of being happy to be the biggest internet retailer on the planet and resting on their laurels eBay would be faced with a problem unseen before, life without search! Their engineers and leaders would have to find someway to spread eBay throughout the internet search. I believe that if any company can figure out an effective way to maintain and grow it’s brand without being search dependent it’s eBay.
2. Google would lose budget but more importantly Google will have forced other large companies to wake up and smell the “I’m too dependent on search” coffee. Not only would these large etailers start to follow eBay’s lead, they would innovate and develop their own ways to branch away from being at the whim of the big G.
3. Finally, this infusion of thinking inspired by fear would bring us to a new level of innovation. Think of the ideas that would surface, new partnerships that would be made, and overall change in the landscape of the web that would occur. The internet would be exciting again, not AJAX exciting, not widget exciting, truly innovative exciting again.
So I for one am hoping that this day comes sooner rather than later.
For more info on eBay vs Google, read up on the Techcrunch article.
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