It appears that a recent objection sent to the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission regarding eBay's planned changes to eBay Australia - where PayPal would be the only accepted payment option, in addition to cash on collection/delivery - may not be as anonymous as it shouldAccording to WebProNews blogger Mike Sachoff, the PDF file of the objection was discovered to have been created from a document titled 'ACCC Submission by Google re eBay Public 2.DOC' by an AuctionBytes reader. The document has since been taken off the ACCC site and replaced with one where the offending information has been removed.
This is not the first time Google and eBay have locked horns, last year Google had planned upon holding a 'Google Checkout Freedom Party' during the eBay Live! event, inviting sellers attending the eBay event to join them in promoting the choice of payment methods (including Google checkout naturally). This event was cancelled after complaints from eBay, who went on to remove their AdWords campaign from Google in what was called a 'planned test'.
The objection claims that the changes proposed by eBay are not in the interests of consumer security as indicated; but are in fact an attempt to hinder competition in online payment. Although eBay have stated in their blog that they have not seriously considered moving to a PayPal only system in the US many believe that this move in eBay Australia is test case for a wider rollout making this case an important battle in the online payment market.
The ACCC intend upon giving a ruling in the next few weeks before June 17, when eBay plan upon making the changes.
