Google and eBay pursue sellers

Bambi Francisco at CBS Marketwatch looks at competition between Google and eBay:

Will search advertising ultimately become a better mousetrap for sellers? Or to what extent will search advertising take away the potential dollars that were once expected to flow onto eBay's marketplace?

As one eBay seller said to me via e-mail: "Most sellers are like me and didn't really think there was life outside of eBay, but we are getting educated fast." Another seller said he's decided to put up his own Web site for $19.95 per month and buy keywords on Google and Yahoo's Overture.

"Products on Google are not under as much pressure as eBay so you can typically get 5 to 10 percent more for your products on Google," said Scot Wingo of ChannelAdvisor.

See also my earlier post, "Google, small businesses, and eBay".

Update: John Battelle says:

It seems that eBay, which got hammered after its last earnings for not living up to its reputation as a growth machine, is blaming Google for increasing its cost of goods sold. Now that's interesting.

Update: Two years later, a BusinessWeek article reports the eBay "magic is gone ... Shoppers are simply not buying all the inventory anymore. Some items languish without a single bidder. Many shoppers opt for other sites including Amazon.com, use sophisticated search engines such as Google and Yahoo!, or head to store sites directly."