After Yahoo! Inc, eBay has now reached an exclusive agreement with Google, which enables the search company to provide text-based advertising for eBay’s website outside America. However, eBay’s adverting deal with Yahoo! was confined in the USA.
As per the agreement, Google will add a new feature called Click to Call to facilitate users to talk directly to the advertisers by the way of Skype, instead of just clicking through to the advertisers’ Web sites. The Click to Call facility enables customers to click on an advertisement or a product listing on eBay. They will contact the seller using VoIP.
As reported earlier, eBay has been providing a click-to-talk service to its sellers using its own Skype service. With this deal, both Google and eBay will explore interoperability between Skype and Google Talk to provide Text chat and VoIP services.
The New York Times comments on the deal:
EBay is hoping its new partnership with Google will help it find new ways to make money from Skype, its Internet calling service. However, experts wonder if enough people are willing to make the switch from traditional phones to talking through their computers.
Russell Shaw, in his post on ZDnet pointed out:
Google Talk is not interested in Internet telephony’s full potential and what this deal tells me not so much between the lines, is that by working up this deal with Skype, Google is signaling relatively modest plans for Google Talk.
Now the big question arises, will eBay make a profit by investing on Google? Or, it will go down like its Skype venture.
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