I was reading an article today on the San Francisco Chronicle web site about a spat between EBay and Google. 

Apparently. Google had planned to hi-jack eBay's user conference by luring its delegates to a party that promoted Google Checkout.  For those of you that don't know, Google Checkout is the online payment system that Google launched last year to compete with PayPal which is owned by EBay.  Needless to say, EBay were not happy and actually pulled all of their advertising on Google's PPC network (Adwords).  This was naturally a statement made for dramatic effect as much as anything else as although EBay is Google's largest advertiser, between 10-20% of EBay's traffic is sourced from the #1 search engine which makes them somewhat interdependent; and few believe that EBay will keep their ads away from Google for too long.

The more interesting point is how Google's position as giant teddy bear who was seen as a friend to all has increasingly come under attack recently.  In addition to this spat with EBay, you have Microsoft raising objections to Google's acquisition of DoubleClick, you have an on-going battle with the EU relating to privacy and intellectual property, and hundreds if not thousands of relatively smaller skirmishes occurring all over the world.

I think that in many ways Google has had an easy ride for the past 5-6 years and because of that, the company's culture has developed a slight case of over-confidence.. almost arrogance.  I've seen this myself when I have met Google employees - it reminded me of the dot com boom days when everyone thought that they were truly invincible.  We all know how that ended.

Don't get me wrong, Google is a great company and there is no immediate threat to its current position on any front it seems.. but we all know how quickly this can change.  I am a huge Google fan and also [very minor] stockholder.  But due to their incredible success and dominance in the market, they have now become a target and it will be interesting to see what future battles are waged and with whom - friend or foe?