EBAY, YAHOO, GOOGLE COMPETITION IS HEATED

The Internet Stock Blog: eBay #1 in China? No, though Meg Whitman claims "yes".

The Internet Stock Blog: eBay #1 in China? No, though Meg Whitman claims "yes".

The Internet Stock Blog has posted a couple of good articles in regard to EBAY, YAHOO and GOOG. Competition is heating up. All three stocks have traded down in recent weeks. Today, MSFT announced a new search directed advertising program.

EBAY is slugging it out to be "big" in China. EBAY has committed to spend another 100 million dollars to "win" this market. YAHOO has a strong local partner but a third entrant is making a good run. The Internet Stock Blog reported earlier that YAHOO is working on an contextual ad program to compete with GOOG. Today, the WSJ picked up on the story.

The risk to GOOG is real but I believe the growth of this market will be incredibly strong. GOOG, YAHOO, MSFT, and AOL are in some ways like NBC, CBS, ABC, and FOX. All channels advertise and all make money. GOOG was first with contextual ads. GOOG has a big lead, but the others will take share. Sifry's Alerts (http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000298.html) posted a couple of charts from technorati today showing the dramatic growth in weblogs. Technorati is tracking over 7.8 million weblogs and almost 40,000 are being added daily. The purpose of mentioning blogs is to note the tremendous growth in services that are offered by the many smaller fish in the internet world. One can only wonder if the "big" guys will eventually dominate because advertising revenues will be higher using the "big guy" sites.

As Google continues to add services, the "stickyness" factor increases. So far, no one else is ready to take on Google Print. MSFT and YAHOO have the resources to go after this market. Their first task is to develop an ad program. Print may not be seen as a high priority but each search service tends to serve as an anchor to customers. If you want your search to include books, Google is currently the only game in town.