Silicon Insider: How Google and eBay Act Like Nations

Either way, as Mark Schwanhausser of the San Jose Mercury-News wrote, the real impact of the boycotters most likely took place "in the court of public opinion with their angry postings and YouTube videos."

Storm and Stress

And "angry" is the word. Threads popped up everywhere, angrily filled with putative eBay Power Sellers who announced that "I find eBay's comments repulsive" or "eBay does not give a rat's patooey about their sellers, only their bottom line" and inevitably announcing plans to leave the site in lieu of some smaller online auction competitor.

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Whether they actually would make such an extreme move remains to be seen. But certainly, there are more opportunities for such departures now than a few years ago. The online auction industry, which began with a number of such sites, then underwent a shakeout in which eBay emerged with a near-monopoly, has now again — in the manner of every tech industry – fractured into dozens of niche and vertical competitors. And you can bet those "other" online auction houses — at least the smart ones — are offering their own special promotions to capture those disgruntled eBay power sellers.

Against all of this sturm und drang at eBay, the news story coming out of Google — no, not the falling stock price (called that one, didn't I?) — is comparatively prosaic and boring. The company announced Wednesday that it was leading a consortium, called Unity, of six companies (most you haven't heard of) that would spend $300 million to install a 7.68 terabit/sec fiber optic cable across the Pacific floor from California to Japan. This cable is expected to be initially operational by 2010.

Changing Landscape

Besides a few snarky comments in the blogosphere, equating the Unity cable with some of Google's dumber recent initiatives (energy, anyone?), the story was mostly ignored. Infrastructure is never as sexy as a good boycott.

So, what do I think these stories have in common? They beautifully capture just how the nature of companies has changed in the 21st century. Both eBay and Google are unlike any companies of 30 years ago, even global companies of that era such as General Motors and IBM.

For one thing, their reach is astounding — the two companies literally touch, over the course of a year (in Google's case, in a matter of days) more than a billion people around the world.