BuyGoogle has been beating the drum that a great way to understand the mechanics and motives of Google is to view it as a marketplace. Now there's more evidence of Google's true character -- Google is bidding to provide a marketplace for TV advertising.

360techblog reports that eBay and Google are competing to replace the old-fashioned "up front" method of selling TV ads, which requires advertisers to commit a year in advance for ad slots. In its place would be a real-time auction. So if you thought that Google and eBay were on a collision course, now they're directly competing for a truly gigantic ($100 billion?) market.

Next time some Google action doesn't make sense, don't think about Google as a search engine, or a media company, or a content provider, or a portal, or a software developer -- Google is an info marketplace.

(via Battelle)