A rumor about Google that started out on a few blogs yesterday morning ended the day in a Wall Street analyst's report and affected eBay's stock price, according to Bloomberg (http://digbig.com/4fbyb).
The Wall Street Journal's Kevin Delaney said Google confirmed it is testing GoogleBase, a service that Delaney says "could put it squarely in competition with eBay Inc., one of the largest buyers of its search advertisements" (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113026550001678990.html).
Craig Donato, CEO of classifieds aggregator Oodle, speculated on whether a Google classifieds listing could be integrated with Google Adwords, allowing the advertiser posting the listing to pay for additional exposure if they chose. That would certainly differentiate Google classifieds from other classifieds sites.
But, Donato said he is surprised that Google would step over the line from search engine to compete with sites it indexes. It puts Google in the position of being a "friend" of classifieds sites on the search side and a "competitor" on the classifieds side.
Screenshots of GoogleBase can be found online at http://www.seweso.com/blog/2005/10/google-base.php. Interestingly, in a screenshot of a form for users to enter a real-estate listing, there's a field called "I already have a webpage for this item. I would like Google search results to link to the following URL."
Google could be giving advertisers a choice of letting Google searchers view the listing on GoogleBase or on the advertiser's own website, perhaps even allowing advertisers to point to a listing on a marketplace like eBay. This way, advertisers' listings get found on Google, and Google gets to serve up ads on the search results pages, even if it then serves up the listing on the advertisers own website. (On Google's shopping site Froogle, in fact, Google serves up listing results where all listings lead back to the advertisers' websites.) In that case, GoogleBase could be seen as both a classifieds site and as a classifieds listings aggregator.
Some of the screenshots reveal attribute fields. eBay has been rolling out such fields, called Item Specifics, on its site for the past several years. In June, search expert Louis Monier left eBay and went to Google, but was mum on what he would be working on (http://battellemedia.com/archives/001653.php). There was no speculation yesterday on whether Monier was working on GoogleBase.
Google downplayed speculation about GoogleBase on its official blog, naming the post, "Rumor of the Day" (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/10/rumor-of-day.html). Indeed, it's remarkable how much speculation and anticipation greets any rumor involving Google, especially with regards to an auction or payments service.
Scot Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor, which manages listings for many eBay sellers, reported on GoogleBase throughout the day yesterday on his blog (http://ebaystrategies.blogs.com).
