Insider Chatter by Donna Bogatin

UPDATE:  eBay Trumps Google: Is Viacom Next?

What is the REAL moral of the Google Chekout vs. eBay PayPal drama unfolding on this very eve of eBay’s annual party for itself? Google is at risk, from coopetition, big time.

Google has just retracted its invitation to eBay sellers to party (while dissing eBay) together:

eBay Live attendees have plenty of activities to keep them busy this week in Boston, and we did not want to detract from that activity. After speaking with officials at eBay, we at Google agreed that it was better for us not to feature this event during the eBay Live conference. Google is constantly reaching out to new users and sellers, and we are available to privately discuss any matters of concern with individuals as they relate to Google products. Interested parties may contact us.

For background see: Google Turns eBay Party Crasher.

Where does Google stand now? The real story in this not so celebratory tale is much bigger than eBay vs. Google (although that is quite big in and of itself).

What is at stake is Google’s entire raison d’etre, REALLY. Google has a big risk, it is a risk unique to Google, and it is a world wide risk.

The inexorable Google risk is the inevitable conflicts that Google’s real desire to at once 1) own all of the world’s content (without paying for it), 2) control all of the world’s advertising, 3) dominate the world’s computing platforms, 4) process all the world’s payments…breeds.

CEO Eric Schmidt on his worldwide domination ambitions:

We said we are in the search business, so we need all of the information. We want to partner with people to get information so our search users can see it.

We’re also in the advertising business, and we’d like to provide advertising services to people who have their own proprietary content. So depending on where we are in that spectrum, we either do an advertising deal or a content deal or a hybrid deal.

But ultimately our goal at Google is to have the strongest advertising network and all the world’s information, that’s part of our mission.

AND, that was BEFORE, the newly updated “Search, Ads & Apps” Google mission; i.e., Microsoft “killer” Google Gears!

Google does not merely want to have its cake and eat it too, it wants to control and make money off of every iota of the cake’s life cycle: 

Google Scholar: Cake history
Google Apps: Recipe writing
Google Search: Vendor sourcing
Google Gmail: Factory communication
Google News: Union troubles
Google AdWords: Cake contest
Google AdSense: Website leverage
Google Checkout: Cake sales
Google Maps: Cake retail
Google’s YouTube: Cake video…

Every single man, woman and child, is a Google target user and/or partner and/or advertiser and every single school, government, organization and business is a Google target user and/or partner and/or advertiser.

Is such a scenario really tenable, all over the world, in every market? NO, as today’s Google vs. eBay fiasco undercores.

Google’s heretofore (almost) unblemished track record in exploiting its monopoly like position via coopetition to its for very high profit advantage is being tested, big time. The inherent, unsurmontable conflicts of interest the Google world domination mission yields have been exposed.

Google’s big, bad risk is that its Googley modus operandi is not sustainable. For (big) example, Google can NOT enjoy at once eBay’s (very) large AdWords spend while at the same time seek to undermine customer eBay for the benefit of Google’s own Checkout.

UPDATE: eBay Trumps Google: Is Viacom Next?

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN