Google Auctions Vs. Ebay

Google Should Compete With Ebay

Everyone and their dog knows there is only one player in the online auction world. Ebay have a very unhealthy monopoly of the market, allowing them to hike up fees, kick off buyers and sellers alike, force people to use Paypal, which incidentally is owned by ebay and also charges higher fees than any other provider. These are just the tip of the iceberg as to why ebay is becoming very unpopular amongst sellers, and a few buyers!

Although other big players have dipped their toes in running online Auctions, notably amazon and yahoo, neither committed to these or provided the resources and support to offer a viable alternative. Yahoo Auctions was pulled after only a few months and although amazon auctions was ticking over with very little publicity or support from amazon it was also closed down recently.

Many people have got quite excited about the possibility of Google running their own auction site. Although nothing has officially been stated by Google, the introduction of Google Checkout last year is certainly a great foundation for google to do so. Other online auction sites suffer from not being indexed by search engines and not having a secure online payment system, unless they use paypal, which kinda defies the point of being independent if you end up giving ebay a cut of the profits by using paypal.

It would be assumed if google did launch an auction site that their fees would be cheaper than ebays

Google Should Compete With Ebay

There is no shortage of other auction sites, (just check the list below!) But why do they not deliver?

One of the main reasons is that customers are a suspicious lot. Would you sign up for an account with any of them as a buyer? When it's easier to just go straight to ebay and have a choice of hundreds? Though, if Google were to join the Auction Market, many would be customers already have google accounts and would be happy to trust a google auction site.

The other big reason is that as very few people actually sell on these other sites, the range of items is very poor in comparison.

Finally, many other auction sites seem to have problems getting their sites listed, or even their items listed on search engines. So even if they do have something you want, no one is going to tell you it's there.

If google will agree to an interview about the possibility of starting an auction site, we will add it!

Meanwhile here's one of the Google Guys being interviewed about Google Checkout, which is surely the cornerstone of them opening and auction site in the near future.

Google recently integrated a pay-per-action facility to their adsense program. Surely it won't be too much more for them to add a specific auction advert module where you could define a few parameters and have this show in your advert box?

Am I dreaming or would this be a great feature for users of their auctions and advertisers? Not forgetting potential bidders who would see their adverts everywhere!

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On the 9th November 2008 I added this stat counter to see where visitors to this page are coming from.

Now you can see where in the world the idea for Google Auctions is popular!

So, if you want to leave some general comments, please feel free to do so!

There's more below the comments too!