Exclusive Look At Google Payments

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1. Joe Anderson
   

   February 27th, 2006 at 3:10 am

   I doubt I’ll use it, but it will force PayPal to lower fees.

   I’ve recently got paid £100 for advertising, through PayPal. I ended up getting only about £95.

   I’ve only used Google Base once, and not to sell, but to put some info up. I doubt it’ll ever take off.

2. Rajiv
   

   February 27th, 2006 at 3:37 am

   Cool. I had recently come up with a mashup idea for a dating site, tailored to indian audiences.

   http://witopia.blogspot.com/20.....ashup.html

   Maybe, i can prioritise the most popular listing and charge money for them now!!!

3. RBA
   

   February 27th, 2006 at 3:40 am

   Google used to say “do one thing and do it really good”. At this point only eBay is still holding to that motto. That’s a plus for eBay (ok they acquired Skype, that’s about it) as I can’t think of any other Internet giant as focused on its core business as eBay is. Even Amazon is flipping with things like A9, maps and the like.

   Becoming the middle man in purchase transactions is no joke. Google has the cash to pour into this service the resources that are needed, but if you look at eBay and its problems - no question they have problems - being as focused as it is on its core business, Google needs more than its brand, traffic, and “no evil” reputation (whether you buy that or not) to become a trusted middleman.

   In fact, Google’s brand and ability to drive traffic to whatever it does could backfire if Base becomes a thieve’s lair before it becomes a safe place to do transactions online. So far, Base is full of crap for what I can see. That’ll need to change the moment a “Buy” button becomes available.

   Disclaimer: I am an ex-eBay employee (1999-2001) but hold no particular interests on the company at this moment, other than being just another casual user.

4. google.dirson.com
   

   February 27th, 2006 at 4:14 am

   Nice shots!

   We wrote a post about some ‘Google Purchases’ features:
   http://google-blog.dirson.com/post.new/0382/

5. Robert
   

   February 27th, 2006 at 4:49 am

   Google is heading down a BAD road with this one. If you look at eBay, you will notice a big group of fans that have turned into “haters”. The same might happen with Google.

   “Do one thing and do it really good” - Perhaps they should stick to their motto. Google is a SEARCH ENGINE - maybe they should fix their problems with that, before moving on to much larger markets.

6. theCreator
   

   February 27th, 2006 at 5:56 am

   “Google is a SEARCH ENGINE - maybe they should fix their problems with that, before moving on to much larger markets.” - Diversification of revenue dude. A one-trick pony is a pony to be killed.

7. Nik Cubrilovic
   

   February 27th, 2006 at 8:05 am

   “Diversification of revenue dude.” reason why I added: “and also started up a much needed additional source of revenue.” at the end

8. Murali
   

   February 27th, 2006 at 8:33 am

   Nik,

   Yours is perphaps one of the very few Blogs (I havn’t come across any other) that raises the important issue of reputation when anonymous buyers & sellers are transacting

   Trust & Reputation ain’t easy … this might just be the point on which Google falls flat (hope they aren’t banking on Orkut’s Social Networking features to see them through on this count)

9. Philipp Schumann
   

   February 27th, 2006 at 9:03 am

   “If you look at eBay, you will notice a big group of fans that have turned into haters. The same might happen with Google.”

   There is either irrelevance, or you will have some people love you and automatically other people hate you. So nothing inherently wrong with that (as long as the balance is right, that is).

10. Steve
    

    February 27th, 2006 at 9:10 am

    They really needed something to increase their revenues to keep the guys in Wall Street happy.

11. Karyyk
    

    February 27th, 2006 at 10:14 am

    eBay I have no problem with. PayPal on the other hand has absolutely no interest in customer security, and has left its users out to dry time and time again (if there are haters, this is why…). Just because you’re not FDIC insured doesn’t mean you’re in no way responsible to your customers.

    I’m all for this. Why do only one thing well, when you can do many things (and make a profit from them)?

12. Ambrand
    

    February 27th, 2006 at 10:21 am

    This will force paypal to reduce their fees for receiving payments. However Google will need a key application to get people using the system. Thus the real competitor is Ebay not paypal

13. Dan
    

    February 27th, 2006 at 10:22 am

    Hi,

    I heard Googles payment system is going to be called “gbuy”. If so, will they have a payment system like ebay using just your gmail email address?

    Thanks,
    Dan

14. lenoxreplacements
    

    February 27th, 2006 at 11:05 am

    Paypal is a monopoly.I welcome the idea of having a competitor for Paypal.
    Western Union tried it, Citibank tried, HSBS still trying with Yahoo. They all failed. Can Google do it?. Yes, if google can figure out where the handicap is and how to fix it.

    I think one of biggest drawbacks of online payments is refunds and fraud. Believe it or not Ebay spends a lot of money and personnel on fixing the refund claims and fraud which happens with Paypal payments.Fraud, in this contest is not that people really want to cheat. But it is very subtle way of cheating. For example a person who buyes an item from Google can claim a refund through his credit card company. All he has to do is provide a confirmation number to credit card company stating that he has returned the item to the seller. How Google is going to verify whether he has really returned the item is the key. The buyer could just return an empty box. On the same token Sellers who have recieved the item can claim he/she did not receive the full item/item broken or damaged. If Google has enough resources to handle this Google can succeed. But how much will Google invest to fix these problems is the key issue. How much importance Google will give to fixing grievances. So the real handicap of online payments is issues which will arise after the transaction is over.

15. Bradley Twohig
    

    February 27th, 2006 at 11:06 am

    Hmmm…can you say, Unstructured EBay? Just wait till they put in deal ending dates.

16. Jay
    

    February 27th, 2006 at 11:34 am

    You seized on the key issue: reputation systems and modeling transactions. Based upon some knowledge of Google’s efforts, I am not sure that they are on the right track with this stuff. On the other hand, PayPal has many weaknesses to exploit.

17. Saul Weiner
    

    February 27th, 2006 at 11:49 am

    I worry about Google expanding too quickly and creating a whole set of disjointed products. After they created google pages where anyone can figure out your gmail email address through the webpage’s url; they just keep on launching disjointed products.

    And now they are trying to sneak in calendar (CL2) code into gmail in a less than private manner.

18. josh
    

    February 27th, 2006 at 12:49 pm

    just wanted you all to know that I am the proud owner of said unicorn shown here. shipment was confirmed today.

    

    /josh

19. Ian Danforth
    

    February 27th, 2006 at 2:32 pm

    Nik,

    Any word on fees? The ever increasing cuts that both eBay and Paypal take stop me from selling online.

    Right now the fees charged for selling videos on video.google are huge (30%) and that worries me despite it being a fairly different market.

    Personally I’d like to only pay for advertising my products. The paypal money transfer cut really bugs me. Perhaps google will add in the CC fees and leave it at that?

    Here’s hoping.

    -Ian

20. stephthegeek
    

    February 27th, 2006 at 3:24 pm

    Any word on whether they’ll allow transactions for adult sites/products?

21. Blaze
    

    February 27th, 2006 at 3:45 pm

    Geeze that was quite quick to get started. Congratulations Google.

22. John
    

    February 27th, 2006 at 9:21 pm

    Word is that the service is free. Credit card processing will probably be near 3%

23. John
    

    February 27th, 2006 at 9:22 pm

    i think if this takes off, eBay is in very serious danger.

    It serves them right for keep raising rates.

    eBay just raised rates again recently

24. Nik Cubrilovic
    

    February 28th, 2006 at 12:21 am

    to answer some of the questions here I believe that Google will come out with very very low fees on payments. It is a company that can afford to sacrifice in the short term to get some traction and hurt their competition (eBay in this case)

25. goldenbushel
    

    February 28th, 2006 at 1:05 am

    I believe more in independent payment companies like LUUP, who will be the real competitors to paypal, taking instant payments way beyond the net because you can pay by text and within WAP sessions as well. A partnership with Google and LUUP would be ideal - Google gets to focus on it’s core expertise, the single-sign-up experience is preserved, and rates will still undercut PayPal… but the independence of LUUP means that it can be used across the market, and P2P as well.

26. Joseph
    

    February 28th, 2006 at 1:25 am

    that scares me =)

27. Phillip Davies
    

    February 28th, 2006 at 5:12 am

    Doubt it will get used? Do you realise how powerful google are.

28. Anthony Liken
    

    February 28th, 2006 at 5:55 am

    Sup joey

29. Anthony Liken
    

    February 28th, 2006 at 5:55 am

    wut u up to biotch

30. joey cincada
    

    February 28th, 2006 at 5:56 am

    wasup

31. joey cincada
    

    February 28th, 2006 at 5:57 am

    wut u doing

32. Anthony Liken
    

    February 28th, 2006 at 5:57 am

    joeys gay bom bom bom ha ha

33. Anthony Liken
    

    February 28th, 2006 at 5:57 am

    nothin u

34. Anthony Liken
    

    February 28th, 2006 at 5:59 am

    nm u hommie

35. Nik Cubrilovic
    

    February 28th, 2006 at 6:00 am

    hey fools that is what the 3bubbles chat is for. any more of this and you will be going down as spammers

36. Anthony Liken
    

    February 28th, 2006 at 6:00 am

    so u over there beatin ur meat freaken QUEAR

37. Google Search engine marketing
    

    February 28th, 2006 at 7:36 am

    Hello:

    I have heard about Google base, another venture by Google Search engine team.

    My problem with all these new dot.com companies is that they focus too much on creating businesses but not on the functionality of the services and good customer relations.

    Right now, I have a problem with errors Google claims to be in my Google sitemap that I submitted to them and yet I can’t get any help from them to fix it.

    They refer you to post the problem at a forum!

    If they can’t handle problems arising from the use of their sitemap technology, why create it? To frustrate people?

    You follow their lunatic brain racking demands to optimize and submit your website. But do they give you any ranking right away? No!

    Instead they bury your website pages and if they like after 6 months they will begin to show a few pages.

    Then after a week or so, your pages disappear completely.

    They come and they go at random. Nobody can figure the logic behind it.

    They demand that you get one way links from similarly themed high page ranked websites.

    But if you have a new domain name, no high paged rank website will link to you because they don’t gain anything from that, but instead their page rank may be diluted by linking to you who has zero page rank.

    They are playing football game with peoples’ website and income.

    To me, this is sabotage of all the efforts honest people all over the world are making to do business on the internet and earn income.

    It is autocratic, anti-commerce and anti-business.

    I wonder how long the world internet businessmen and women will tolerate this insanity.

    So, I will not be attracted to any more ventures by Google.

    They create good services, but don’t have any technical support or good customer relationship.

    You have to be a skilled computer programmer or rocket scientist to be able to use their services.

    There is no service from them that is easy, simple to sign up and use and backed up by real human being technical support and sound friendly customer service.

    Perhaps they believe that everyone doing business on the internet is a computer programmer or an IT professional or software engineer or a rocket scientist and should be able to figure out all their complicated steps in signing up and using their services.

    When companies are arrogant and forget their customers and don’t care to have sound customer service, one can easily predict what will be the destiny of such a company.

    Ikey Benney
    http://www.maychic.com/services.htm

38. Robert
    

    February 28th, 2006 at 8:40 am

    Okay, diversification of revenue. But what happens when the company loses sight of what made them? Only the tech geeks know about Google Base - the other 99% of the world knows Google as a search engine. Wouldn’t take much for someone to come in and hit the weak points and gain a big market share. Yahoo and MSN aren’t in a position to do so for the simple fact that they have been around for a long time, and people KNOW that their results are crap.

    Yes, I do like Google Base - But honestly, I think services like Edgeio will be the next big thing.

39. Paul kenjora
    

    February 28th, 2006 at 9:20 am

    I think google will have moderate success based on branding. Slap a google icon on poop and some fraction of the populace will believe it to be gold.

    In reality, transaction processing is much different from google’s currnet business model. It requires real time fraud protection and large 3rd party interfaces to banking and credit industries. This will raise googles overhead dramatically.

    This is where googles slide away from “nice” and into “microsoft” begins. As overhead costs rise and 3rd parties (banks, customers) force costs and expansion upon google, they will pass the costs onto customers by charging for more services. Its a proven model and it will happen.

    Yes google is good at developing online products and they have very smart people. Problem is most everything they have don has been in-house, not third party interfaces. (Google designed 3rd party interfaces dont count, im talking banking). How they do when forced to rely upon others is to be seen…

    Overall however I do think competition is healthy and think this will improve online purchasing. In the end however, I think it will hurt google and ultimately the customers who have come to rely on so many other google services.

40. Wizard Prang
    

    February 28th, 2006 at 2:21 pm

    “Google used to say “do one thing and do it really good”. At this point only eBay is still holding to that motto.”

    I disagree. Paypal, Buy-it-now, Want-it-now, Best offer and of course Skype have shown eBay’s scope creep for what it is. IMO eBay tries to to too many things. And it does not try to do them particularly well.

    “Google is heading down a BAD road with this one. If you look at eBay, you will notice a big group of fans that have turned into “haters”. The same might happen with Google.”

    Perhaps they are… but eBay NEEDS some serious competition to keep them honest. I hope Google can be that competition.

    Ebay spends a lot of money and personnel on fixing the refund claims and fraud which happens with Paypal payments.

    …for which it charges its customer $25, so if you get ripped for less than that amount you are SoL. They also charge $20 for Squaretrade mediation. Nice work if you can get it… and good luck if the other party goes NARU (”Not A Registered User”)

41. The Information Bank
    

    February 28th, 2006 at 2:36 pm

    Finally! Here’s a company who actually has the possibility of standing up to Paypal and their fees!

42. jamalak
    

    February 28th, 2006 at 3:51 pm

    I went to the Unicorn Beanie page, it’s 7$ now… funny no?

43. zvi talit
    

    March 1st, 2006 at 1:58 am

    greetings.

    my name is zvi and i’m a journalist for the israeli website nana.co.il.

    i would like to ask for your premmision to use the screenshots above in an article i’m making. (with full credits and all, of course).

    looking fwd for your answer
    zvi talit

44. Marc Jarrett
    

    March 1st, 2006 at 2:33 am

    Great, but the system is too credit card centric. What about the majority of thw world that do NOT have a credit card?

    One thing that practically EVERYONE has access to is a telephone and/or cellphone. And therein lies the solution for content owners, google included, to make money on a global scale.

45. Gary
    

    March 1st, 2006 at 2:45 am

    Damn! Google have got it going on.
    I want to see how eBay will respond to new competition

46. J.D. Smith
    

    March 1st, 2006 at 3:15 am

    I will definitely use it along with my Ebay auctions. PayPal is the most expensive and customer unfriendly service around. Google may just earn all of my business if it can start an auction service like Ebay.

47. mike
    

    March 1st, 2006 at 4:49 am

    Some posters are getting savvy and putting “xyzzy” in the tag even though they don’t accept Google Payments…

48. david
    

    March 1st, 2006 at 1:43 pm

    When we’re dealing with financial transactions, I’m not sure people like the word ‘BETA’ in big letters next to the service title.

    Plus, I think this could have been a great thing, but Google missed the mark. Sadly, those who are developing more thorough and innovative approaches to micropayments and related services will now have to deal with the Google machine pushing what could easily be an inferior product. This could be a huge error by Google.

    I agree with others who say that Google is spreading itself too thin, and neglecting their other core products, like basic search and image search. Google is poised for a major ‘correction’. //

49. Chakky
    

    March 1st, 2006 at 2:11 pm

    i can’t wait to see it work

    how did u get to the payment step ?

50. Google Online payment service
    

    March 1st, 2006 at 8:49 pm

    Hello:

    What is this rumor that I am hearing about Google thinking of introducing an online payment processing like Paypal?

    Who are they kidding?

    Who is going to use it?

    Me?

    Forget-about-it buddy.

    They can’t even index all the pages at my website after 2 yrs and have not ranked them and so have made my business unprofitable.

    This is the same experience that millions of websites owners have.

    And try using their Adword…. a very fast way to drain your ad budget without any ROI.

    Then try Adsense… and get paid nickels and dimes per click from 10 traffic you manage to get from msn and yahoo engines.

    From Google you get zero traffic.

    How can you get traffic from them, when it takes them a year to index your website and still they won’t give you any decent ranking and when they finally do, in a few days it is gone.

    I have to be a raving lunatic to get excited about using any of their new services.

    I hope they are watching their back because it is obvious that Microsoft will eventually deal with them the way they dealt with Netscape.

    The only thing that will save them is to improve their services, their customer and tech support, and become more business and e-commerce friendly by indexing and ranking websites fast and efficiently.

    Ikey Benney
    http://www.maychic.com/maysearch4.htm

51. Carmen Tickal
    

    March 1st, 2006 at 11:16 pm

    IF Google wants to try to compete against ebay, I hope they study what’s wrong with eBay and paypal first. We have sold on ebay since 1997 and ebay just complicates itself more all the time with rules and regulations that the nearly impossible to contact customer service people don’t even know about. Free 24/7 live informed customer support via the telephone would be so helpful to a power seller. And letting us, the seller decide if we want to sell to a buyer or not. Right now, we don’t accept paypal from non confirmed addresses or non US customers with less than 40 positive feedbacks. ebay/Paypal, in it’s pursuit of more money, doesn’t like that. Like I am going to sell a $1,500 item to some one across the ocean with zero feed backs. I don’t think so. Ebay doesn’t really care if the buyer or seller gets ripped off because it affects their revenues.

52. Baus-Tardy-Ho
    

    March 6th, 2006 at 2:38 pm

    Ikey Benney, your businesses arent profitable because clearly they suck, I checked out your site and you’re just a link spammer. Sites like yours should be eradicated from the internet and evidently google agrees. What value do you offer consumers? You’re laughable.

53. Lazy
    

    March 13th, 2006 at 12:45 am

    Look at all the haters here ahaha. Google should stick to search engines? Hilarious and silly because their growth becomes nill. Google will do a good job with this you can believe it. All of you people talking crap on the system are probably the same ones that said google was overvalued at $150 / share. I’m glad to know you are all smarter than google though, maybe I’ll hit you up for biz advice next time.

54. Dan39
    

    March 16th, 2006 at 9:07 am

    eBay don’t deserve to sucess and the amount of users they have. The design is so confusing, the interaction with the user is the worst there is. They are freezed in time. They are still using CGI!?!Their only asset is the number of users and the reputation system. eBay and PayPal get 10% of my sales, that’s just too much.
    I really hope Google with their simplicity and the AJAX tecnology take eBay down.

55. Migs
    

    March 22nd, 2006 at 8:08 am

    eBay is using enterprise Java (J2EE). The “CGI” in their URLs is just a naming relic.

    Hope they offer a payment solution for the Philippines.

56. Paul Maior
    

    March 28th, 2006 at 3:46 am

    The sistem will include Romania ? If not, will suck

57. William Burleigh
    

    April 27th, 2006 at 12:01 pm

    Why not take a moment right now and learn the latest secrets to successful online marketing. Hurry though when they find out this stuff is out in the open who knows what could happen next.

58. PAYPAL SUCKS
    

    May 12th, 2006 at 9:26 pm

    PAYPAL SUCKS

59. kurniawan
    

    June 29th, 2006 at 12:17 am

    I love it. Please support us for the Gpay availability as Paypal is not available in my country

    http://www.petitiononline.com/gpay/petition.html

60. George Fekos
    

    July 16th, 2006 at 10:23 pm

    PAYPAL SUCKS

    PAYPAL don’t deserve the amount of users they have. PAYPAL is one of the bigest scams on the NET.

61. Reply To Moron Baus-Tardy-Ho
    

    August 18th, 2006 at 2:35 am

    To the Moron called “Baus-Tardy-Ho”:

    Why are you afraid of using your real name?

    I googled you but you are no where to be found except here and your stupid post here.

    From your post, it is obvious you’re a certified idiot and possibly mentally deranged, who enjoys attacking people instead of issues which clearly need to be remedied.

    Yes, morons like you need to be eradicated and wiped off from earth because it is you who debase and contaminate this beautiful planet with your venoms.

    You’re a born loser and your days on this planet are cusrsed with suffering and misery because you’re an evil nincompoop bastard moron.

62. Juan
    

    August 19th, 2006 at 12:45 pm

    I have seen gbuy discussions here: http://www.gbuytalk.com/

63. Blog Reviews
    

    December 29th, 2006 at 12:14 pm

    It’ll never catch on, despite the influence Google have in internet marketing and transactions. The simplicity of the PayPal system and familiarity and trust people have with the PayPal brand means Google Payments will remain the much smaller fish.

64. barkmeister
    

    January 29th, 2007 at 6:47 am

    haha Ikey Benney, Baus tardy ho is not only funny but completely right. Your reply contains as many grammatical errors as it does words. You are a fucknut, you are unprofitable and loved by noone. If I wanted to sell you i’d fill your pockets with horse shit to double your worth.