It's yet another sign of the tension between web giants: eBay has decided not to allow its sellers to use Google Checkout, the payment service launched last week by the prolific search engine. Most bloggers see the eBay move as a transparent attempt to protect PayPal, eBay's own payment service. "This is eBay flexing their ... muscles to control the way sellers take credit cards ... if they feel it starts to infringe on the PayPal asset," writes Scot Wingo at eBay Strategies. (The outspoken Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor, a company which helps large companies sell on eBay and which has taken an investment from the e-commerce giant, also points out that it is "ironic they would do this here, and in the same breath go to Congress and fight the Net neutrality battle.")

While eBay's move came without an official explanation, careful eBay observers like AuctionBytes point out that eBay has quietly changed the name of its "Safe Payments Policy" to "Accepted Payments Policy" -- suggesting that safety or reliability was not at issue.

All is fair in love and Internet competition, writes Microsoft exec Don Dodge: "Any company can set any rules and policies they want as to how to accept payments and how to issue refunds or credits...or not." But Ars Technica thinks the move may be shortsighted: "At best, eBay comes off looking petty and frightened of potential competition from Google. At worst, the online auction house could lose large customers."