eBay Yanks Google Adwords

eBay has picked up its ball and gone home. The Internet auction giant has stopped buying Google AdWordsfollowing a spat with the search engine.   The row started last week, with Google’s announcement of an event that coincided with the beginning of eBay Live in Boston. eBay Live is theannual convention for the site’s buyers and sellers.   The Google event, dubbed the Google Checkout Freedom Party, was evidently aimed at eBayers, encouraging them to demand that eBayallow the use of Google Checkout, theonline payment service. eBay prefers Paypal, and so far has not opened its site to Checkout.   eBay pulled its use of Google AdWords on Wednesday, evidentlyin retaliation for Google’s forwardness, although the company insisted that the move was really part of an experiment in testing different advertising strategies. eBay had been the singlelargest U.S. customer for AdWords, according to statistics, spending around $25 million a quarter.   Google has claimed that Checkout isn’t meant to compete with Paypal, but its message toeBay users seemed particularly blatant.   “We’ll use the same spot where revolutionaries launched the Boston Tea Party to celebrate freedom with free food, free drinks, free live music –even free massages," Google invited eBayers in a blog post.   Although Google canceled the party, it’s added another layer of tension to relations between the two. eBay has been aninvestor in Cragislist, which competes with Google Base, for instance. And eBay has a partnership with Yahoo, one of Google’s biggest rivals.