eBay versus Google (2Q05 conf call quotes, EBAY, GOOG)

eBay CEO Meg Whitman explicitly stated on her Q2 conf call what many already surmised: that eBay and Google compete directly. Excerpts:

...you may not think of eBay as a search engine, but of course helping buyers find the item they want is a critical function of our platform, and our efforts here have already led to surprising results in the U.S. The number of searches performed on eBay actually puts us on par with Google, and our searches are all about shopping, buyers looking for items to bid on.

Magellan is our next generation search capability… which is in beta right now and will be rolled out over the next couple of months… The more effective we can make finding, the higher the conversion rates, the more robust marketplace it is for buyers and sellers… what Magellan does is… characterize free text listings in a much more robust way than we've been able to do it thus far.

(Quotes are from the CCBN StreetEvents transcript.)

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