Google-eBay deal: Discovering small business
By Richard Koman - August 28, 2006
By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher
The way I understand the eBay-Google "click to talk" deal is that it may provide an extension of Google ads for the kinds of businesses that arent' really running sophisticated ecommerce sites. That's still most of the businesses in the world. It brings those businesses into the online world if they can advertise on Google and have the click-through be a real-world phone call.
The AP story emphasizes eBay's attempts to get small service providers as well as small products vendors onto the site, and by including Google search results (on the non-US eBay sites), they are improving the value of eBay to auction bidders.
On the Google side, which is more interesting, it's an expansion of the advertising model - using VoIP calling to bring in a new level of business as advertisers. But will users really click to call? Do Mom and Pop yet have headsets permanently plugged into their computers? Do they really want to call?
And despite assertions that the calling will be somehow be split between Skype and GTalk, Russell Shaw notes that the deal signals GTalk will never amount to anything:
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What this deal tells me not so much between the lines, is that by working up this deal with Skype, Google is signalling relatively modest plans for Google Talk. ... In doing deals with a rival that is farther along the PC-to-PSTN infrastructure curve than Google Talk shows any signs of wanting to be, Google is signalling they only want Google Talk to primarily be an IM application-and not get into Internet telephony full-bore.
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