(InfoWorld) - EBay has pulled all of its paid search ads from Google AdWords network in the U.S in an eyebrow-raising move likely to be interpreted in the industry as a sign of deteriorating relations between the two Internet giants.

However, eBay has kept its AdWords campaigns outside of the U.S., eBay spokesman Hani Durzy said Wednesday.

Durzy characterized the decision to pull the U.S. Google ads as an instance in a continued experiment eBay does to determine the best allocation of its advertising and marketing budget.

But a source familiar with the situation said the move is an angry reaction by eBay's management to Google's decision to hold a protest party concurrent with the start of eBay Live, the company's annual conference for merchants.

Google has been reaching out to media to promote the party, aimed at eBay merchants who are upset that eBay doesn't allow them to use Google's Checkout online transaction system. eBay Live begins Thursday evening in Boston, which is the time and place Google has chosen for its protest party.

This source also said the situation is fast-developing and fluid, with high-ranking eBay executives holding meetings right now to discuss the extent of the decision.

EBay has said that Checkout, introduced about a year ago, doesn't have enough of a track record yet, while Google argues that eBay is just trying to protect its own PayPal online payment system.

Durzy said the decision to "reallocate" the Google ad budget elsewhere isn't tied to the Checkout protest party, but he acknowledged that the Google event hasn't gone down well inside of eBay.

"This is a regular thing we do across the different channels we use for marketing, but, having said that, we are disappointed that Google has chosen this time to detract from our annual event that gives online sellers a chance to learn how to grow their business in eBay and in other channels," Durzy said. "It's not the kind of activity one partner normally does with another."

Relations between eBay and Google have been strained in recent years, as Google has morphed from a partner into a partial competitor with new products like Checkout and its Google Base listings service.

In May of last year, eBay and Yahoo struck a wide-ranging partnership that, among other things, made Yahoo the exclusive provider of search and display ads within U.S. eBay sites.

Although Google performs a similar function for eBay sites outside of the U.S., the eBay-Yahoo tie up was seen as a defensive move by eBay and Yahoo against Google.

EBay doesn't have a timetable for when it might reinstate its paid search ads in Google's U.S. AdWords system, Durzy said. "We need time to evaluate the impact" of the pullout, he said. "We don't have a time for when we might turn them back on."

EBay pulled the ads "a couple of days ago," he said. "We're in the midst of an experiment and we'll see how it goes," he said.

(InfoWorld) - Apple's just-released public beta of the Safari 3 Web browser -- the first version to run on Windows as well as Mac OS X -- is drawing fervent and sometimes heated reactions from early testers. The following is an unexpurgated sample of what bloggers, ranging from grumpy Windows users to Mac fanboys, had to say in the immediate aftermath of Monday's Safari 3 announcement:

Is Safari faster than Steve Jobs speeding on Hwy. 280 in his Mercedes SL AMG? "I miss the spell-checking, but damn -- this gives Opera a run for it's [sic] money in terms of speed. I just tested loading my homepage with both of them, and I have no doubts about it." -- Griffith, Forever Geek

"After downloading and installing Safari on XP (w/ 1GB RAM, P4 3Ghz, yada yada yada), I have to say that it is a complete joke ... the browser is just so horribly slow. Did they test this? It takes literally at least 5x longer to render pages in Safari than Firefox. Sometimes even longer. Very sad." -- Doug, Read/ Write Web

"I did a comparison of loading CNN on both browsers,and Safari beat Firefox by a mile." -- Hoobam, Download Squad

"The more I run Safari on Vista, the faster it launches. Am I hallucinating? Is there a cosmic force that means just when I complain about Safari taking 57 seconds to launch, as soon as that complaint is made public, it launches much more quickly? Am I going insane? Or is someone playing a clever prank on me?" -- Joel Spolsky, Joel On Software

Fonts: fuzzier than a peach skin?

"If you sit really close to the monitor, then the Windows way is better. However, if you move back a couple of feet (3 feet or so from the screen to your eyes), then the Apple way seems more readable. The Apple rendering is definitely darker." -- Brendan Dowling, Coding Horror

"It looks like they've skewed the contrast of the fonts to an absurdly low level. I'm curious why Apple's default font rendering strategies, to my eye -- and to the eyes of at least two other people -- are visibly inferior to Microsoft's on typical LCD displays. This is exactly the kind of graphic designer-ish detail I'd expect Cupertino to get right, so it's all the more surprising to me that they apparently haven't." -- Jeff Atwood, Coding Horror

"In Safari, go to Edit/Preferences ... and then select the Appearance tab. For "Font smoothing," choose Light (the default is Medium). Much better now. Not perfect, mind you, but much better." -- Tom, Coding Horror

"I also noticed that if I increase the font size, Apple-style anti-aliasing becomes tolerable. I'm beginning to think that the differences are. 1) Apple doesn't hand-tune the font aliasing hints for smaller font sizes. 2) Apple chose a much, much darker contrast level for its anti-aliasing algorithm." -- Jeff Atwood, Coding Horror

And now for today's bug report....

"Seems like the only website my Safari works with is Apple's own homepage.

Crashed about 15 times and I've only been _trying_ to use it for an hour."

--  Brandon, Download Squad

"I installed Safari, and every single time I attempt to bookmark something, it crashes -- hard." -- EJ Passeos, TechCrunch

"The only browser unable to correctly display a Google result page. Wow."

--  Xavier, TechCrunch

"Oh damn, I just crashed with Safari at the 1st Google request by entering Japanese characters." -- Eirikur, Engadget

"ALL the menu dropdowns don't work (they are just empty). Half the text is missing on many pages. URL bar doesn't work. Selects a non standard font for the pages. Need some more?" -- ScOObyDoo, Engadget

Well, how about the new features?

"The most notable new feature is an improved Firefox-style way to search for text on a Web page. Hit Control-F, and an oval search box appears towards the top of the window. Type your search term, hit enter, and watch the page go gray with your search terms highlighted in white or bright orange (that's the selected result)." -- Narasu Rebbapragada, PC World

"Tabbed browsing? Been done. Easy Bookmarks? Been done. Popup blocking? Old news. Inline Find -- stunning visually but also been done. SnapBack? This is a gimicky [sic] back button -- not good enough. Forms autofill -- zzz. Built-in RSS -- yawn. When are we getting to the good stuff? Er ... okay, so that's it, there is nothing new here." -- Vincent Maher, Media in Transition

"The display window is VERY clean; even the status bar at the bottom of most Windows applications is missing (configurable to have it return) to give maximum viewable area. Notably absent are the OS X style green, yellow, and red Window controls in the top right of every dialog window -- stylized but otherwise standard Minimize, Maximize, and Close buttons are found instead." -- Scratching The Surface

"If it wasn't so damn ugly, and made use of more than 2 mouse buttons (no middle button click-to-scroll or back/forward at present), it may be useful. I admit the WebKit is rather snappy at displaying web pages but I can't stand the interface." -- Lizard.boy, Download Squad

The final word(s)?

"The new version is 3 and really it does what they claim, SPEED. The only problem is I have become so comfortable with Firefox that just speed isn't enough for me to switch." -- Jeremy Jones, Multimedia-PCs.com

"It's like software from a different world installed on a Windows-powered computer (much like how Windows users might initially find iTunes)." -- J. Angelo Racoma, J Spot

"I've used it for a good 4 hours straight just surfing along a bunch of websites and stuff. It is a lot faster than Firefox, which was my browser of choice, and it is much faster than IE. There are a bit of glitches on it, which is understandable since it is a beta. Once all the features are perfected and the glitches are fixed it'll be a find [sic] browser." -- Jae, Engadget

"I'm surprised nobody has said that XP/Vista is making Safari crash ;) After all you know, Apple can do no wrong." -- ssummer, Engadget