Q&A: Are Google and BuyBundle a threat to Amazon, or sellers?

QUESTION: What the heck is going on? Is Google Base an alternative marketplace for us to sell books? Is it a listing portal, or something else? I've read their Web site and I still don't get it.

And I wonder about the implications of Amazon listings being populated on Google via BuyBundle. Or via that Google Base Store Connector. I'm wondering if Amazon's participation agreement prohibits it.

Also, Steve, I wonder if there is any business relationship between you and BuyBundle or between you and the parts of Google that apparently look to compete with Amazon.

ANSWER: Google used to have something called "Froogle," which was supposed to become a marketplace. After keeping Froogle on the back burner for years, Google apparently is scrapping that project. Base is essentially a collection of product listings, including items from Amazon, eBay and Yahoo stores.

It's hard to know where Google is going with this. One theory is that by getting all standardized products (anything with an ISBN or UPC) into Base, Google can stop sending free search-engine traffic to Amazon, eBay and other e-commerce sites. Instead, Google could send people searching for books and other items to Base. Then any e-commerce sites that wanted product-search traffic from Google would need to pay for it through Adwords. That's the theory.

Google is shaping up as a huge competitor to Amazon. I know Google has serious plans for book retailing on Book Search. They're signing up publishers now to provide online viewing of books, with Google keeping a 30-percent commission. Whether they'll add physical books to this or a connection with Base is anyone's guess.

As far as listings from Amazon showing up on Base, I'm sure Amazon is concerned about it to the extent it would enable Pro-Merchants to conduct transactions outside Amazon. Who owns the listings? It seems to me sellers do -- the book cover images and descriptions are provided by publishers, not Amazon. Does any of this violate our agreement with Amazon? I don't know, but I'm sure Amazon will try outlawing it if they see fit.

Until now, eBay has encouraged sellers to add their store listings to Google Base, but perhaps this will change if Base becomes a marketplace and threatens eBay's revenue. It's an interesting coincidence (or not?) that eBay and Amazon recently undermined the effectiveness of stores (eBay by raising fees and removing items from search results, while Amazon replaced zShops with non-functioning stores).

BuyBundle enables sellers to accept PayPal. If Google plugs Checkout into this equation, things will really hit the fan.

It will be interesting to see what happens, I don't have a clue where this is going. However, just for the record, I don't have any connections or financial interests in BuyBundle or Google. The only advertisements on this site are the obvious ones in the right column.