Google High Bidder in eBay Auction for 'Well-Known Obscene Hand Gesture'

Good thing Google Checkout was never intended to be a PayPal killer. Because if it was, you might think Google’s plan to host a Google Checkout party outside the eBay Live customer event in Boston tonight was something more than a funny little coincidence. You know, the same way you might think that eBay’s decision to yank all of its paid search ads from Google’s AdWords network was retaliation for that party, instead of the marketing “experiment” it so clearly was. The same way you might think Google’s unexpected cancellation of the party it had so gleefully promoted was a haphazard effort to smooth things over with the auction giant and not just the result of poor planning. Or that this entire misadventure was another sign of the significant deterioration of relations between the two Internet titans.