Battle lines defined in web wars
With the announcement of Yahoo and eBay forming an alliance in the online world, including advertising, payment and communication, it is more evidence that big web players with have to work together with a select few, rather than competing fiercely with one another. While the Yahoo/eBay deal is focused in many ways on competing with Google, both companies will likely beneifit from the arrangement, particularly eBay. eBay will be able to further leverage its Paypal service as the preferred way of payment on Yahoo, as well as push out its Skype communication services to Yahoo as well.
Interesting, with Google’s $1 billion investment in Time Warner’s AOL late last year, it leaves Microsoft as the last big player not to have made a move. There is speculation that it will partner with content, community and other players to bolster its online advertising service. Time will tell but the industry is certainly changing from the “I do it myself” attitude.
