Sattler has lost the plot! I know he’s never been an eBay exponent, but his latest conspiracy theory has eBay taking over the Internet purely to unseat Google and give Microsoft a kicking into the bargain.
Piecing together a couple of industry partnerships he builds up a picture of Firefox, Yahoo! and Facebook mafiosi controlled by the all seeing eBay. The cartel bow down to eBay, even to the extent of Yahoo! closing it’s online auction business just so that they could build an eBay search tool.
The shadowy group have joined forces and in return for supporting eBay they’ve agreed to build Firefox’s market share. Already they’ve killed his Microsoft Internet Explorer with a new breed of digital images that forced him to use Firefox. Apparently viewing them instantly causes IE to close rendering it useless for today’s Internet.
Sattler concludes that the Internet is getting smaller as eBay gain control with the ultimate aim of knocking Google off the map. I don’t suppose it could be that there’s no conspiracy and it’s just too many dodgy downloads on his PC causing it to fall over?
As for Google – maybe the world is waking up to the fact that paid advertising (Adwords make up 98% of Google’s revenue) aren’t nearly as effective as personal recommendation. Whilst it’s great to have a yellow pages who only charge you for advertising when someone clicks on it social networking is much less obtrusive and many times more compelling.
Everything Google has done in recent years including Checkout has been designed to prop up Adwords and make Google the place to go for choice. They now have to start embracing social discovery and social commerce. The Internet is changing with the likes of Squidoo, Stumbleupon and innovations such as distributed commerce.
Sattler is correct, Google should be worried! Not because there’s a conspiracy – Just because they could be left behind.
2 Responses
Much as Stumbleupon is a useful site, which incidentally can provide some great traffic, it is not a search engine, and a retail business which relies on personal recommendation is likely to remain small.
Google Adsense is a fantastic program providing it provides targeted trackable traffic.
That’s true today Trevor, but what happens in the future when zillions of products have been recommended and you can search for the most recommended long tail products?
If keywords (as ever!) are specific enough it could become a force to be reckoned with. Not today… but maybe tomorrow (or the day after tomorrow ;-))