Online auction giant eBay has sent a message to third party search engines: quit tapping into our database, fools! Meaning, said engines can no longer tap eBay and post results with direct links to the items for sale.
eBay says the move is for its customers' protection, but others tell ZDNet it equals a downright repudiation of the open information and exchange environment upon which the Internet essentially depends.
Bidders Edge is one of the Web sites which felt the eBay hammer come down a few weeks back. They received a letter from eBay asking it to stop including eBay listings in their search results. "We're a $9 million company, they're a multibillion dollar company," Bidders Edge vice president George Reinhardt tells ZDNet. "We think we could win a court battle, but in the meantime they would probably do all sorts of nasty legal things and we don't have the resources to fight them."
RubyLane.com co-founder Tom Johnson says eBay's move is a way to cut back on competition. "They feel that if they can successfully stop every search engine from taking their data," he tells ZDNet, "they will have to go to eBay to find eBay items." RubyLane considered continuing to list eBay items regardless but they also feared legal consequences.
Kevin Pursglove, an eBay spokesman, tells ZDNet the shutdown on the third-party search engines is a way to protect the integrity of the eBay experience for customers. But others in the online auction business suggest that eBay may be its own potential worst enemy - because blocking third-party listings from eBay might just as easily prevent people from checking and perhaps staying with eBay itself.
"(We're) generally appreciative and understanding of the benefits global search provides the consumer," says AuctionUniverse's G. Pat Hughes. "They have a place in the marketplace."
But Pursglove has a soft warning for any other such sites looking to list eBay results. "It's just a matter of time before we find out," he says. "We will ask them to stop."
