SAN JOSE, Calif. – The dance of shifting alliances among Internet giants continued Monday with a “change your partner” call from Google, who has convinced eBay to let it sell text-based advertising on eBay’s non-U.S. Web sites.
Three months ago, eBay agreed to a similar deal to let Yahoo, Google’s chief rival in Internet search, to sell text-based advertising on eBay’s domestic sites.
EBay is the world’s largest online marketplace. Its alliance with Yahoo was widely seen as an effort to join forces against Google’s advertising juggernaut.
Executives from Google and eBay said their multiyear advertising agreement, which was announced early Monday morning, would also include an experiment in “click-to-call” advertising using both Google Talk and Skype. Starting in the near future, Skype users will be invited to download a modified toolbar from Google, which will include a button from Skype.
“This agreement underscores how much we value eBay as a partner,” Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said in a statement.
In addition to selling more than $4.7 billion of Internet advertising during the first half of this year, Google has also launched Google Checkout, an online payments service that directly competes with eBay’s PayPal. During the same six-month period, revenues from PayPal made up 24 percent of eBay’s total revenues of $2.8 billion.
The deal announced Monday does not include any provisions for promoting the companies’ competing payment services. Alex Kazim, president of Skype, said the companies were continuing to explore different types of partnerships.
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