Google Checkout Scrubs Its Boston Party After Talks with eBay

The party's off. Google Inc., which had planned to sell its Google Checkout online payment system Thursday night at a party in Boston during a convention of eBay Inc. buyers and sellers (Digital Transactions News, June 12), has abruptly canceled the event after talks with eBay. Mountain View, Calif.-based Google is tightlipped about the reasons behind the decision to scrub the party, which it hoped would attract sellers gathered at the convention, some of whom Google says are dissatisfied by eBay's nearly year-long ban on Checkout as a payment method on its online marketplace. The eBay Live! event , held annually, attracts more than 10,000 attendees. A June 13 corporate blog item posted by Google Checkout marketing lead Tom Oliveri says that “we at Google agreed it was better for us not to feature this event during the eBay Live conference” after talks with eBay. Reached Thursday by Digital Transactions News, a Google spokesperson said he could not comment beyond what was in the blog. San Jose, Calif.-based eBay, Google's largest client for search ads, on Wednesday decided to cancel all of its advertising on the Google search network, business that reportedly amounts to less than $25 million in quarterly revenue to Google, according to press reports. An eBay spokesman would not comment on whether the advertising decision was linked to the Google Checkout party, pointing instead to a “test” the company was conducting that involves moving marketing dollars to alternative channels, according the reports. The spokesman, who did say the Checkout party was “inappropriate,” did not say how long the advertising test was intended to run, the reports add. Responding to the inquiry from Digital Transactions News, the Google spokesman added this statement regarding what he calls eBay's “ads allocation experiment:” “We don't comment on individual advertiser relationships or spending. We look forward to a continued positive relationship with eBay.”