EBay resumes advertising with Google

Online auction leader EBay Inc. said Friday that it planned to resume advertising through Google Inc. but would increase its reliance on other services.

EBay is one of the biggest buyers of keyword ads on Google’s leading pay-per-click advertising system, AdWords, using them to promote its online auctions. It canceled all Google ads this month in protest of the Web search company’s bid to woo EBay customers to a rival payment system.

Hani Durzy, a spokesman for San Jose-based EBay, said Friday that his company would begin advertising on Google but less frequently than before. EBay had been buying tens of millions of keyword ads on Google each year.

EBay owns PayPal, which, with 143 million accounts, is the world’s most popular online payment service among merchants and consumers. Last year, Google introduced an alternative payment system called Google Checkout and has been trying to get EBay merchants to accept direct payments via the service.

Now, EBay plans to work with competing advertising systems from Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp.’s MSN, Time Warner Inc.’s AOL and IAC/InterActiveCorp’s Ask.com.