Here’s one for the conspiracy theorists: It turns out that Google App Engine, their new platform for building and hosting third party web applications, is blocking applications from integrating with PayPal for payments.
Developers who are building apps that use PayPal to handle payments usually require the application to send a request to the PayPal service. The URL’s used in these requests are all on the paypal.com domain name, and there is a test environment setup on a URL at www.sandbox.paypal.com. In Google App Engine apps, requests to either of these URL’s returns a generic ‘download’ error with no specific details.
A number of developers complained in a Google App Engine forum discussing the issue (also on Hacker News), where they also found a way to bypass the restriction by using a third-party proxy (like TinyURL). Then, early this morning, a Google employee named Marzia Niccolai wrote a comment, saying that the error was caused by their anti-phishing protections:
Thanks for the report! This is a bug, and we have located the problem. There was an error in our anti-phishing protections that was blocking some specific URL domains from being fetched using the URLFetch service. This was an oversight on our part, and these specific domain restrictions will be removed in the next few days.
Normally something like this wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows. But there’s too much bad blood between Google and eBay not to question this, and Google’s anti-phishing blacklist does not, of course, list the paypal.com domain as a phishing site.
Most developers who have commented on this so far strongly believe that this was a deliberate block by Google. So far, we can only take Google at their word that blocking Paypal was an accident because of the way their anti-phishing rules work. But with so many phishing sites involving Paypal, you would think that when implementing their rules they would at least check that the real Paypal site still works. Besides, the Google.com phishing test shows that Paypal is considered a safe site.
Why would it be different for App Engine? To make things more suspicious, that phishing test tool was launched last month.
We have emailed Google for a comment and will be updating this post as news comes in.
Update: In the post we mentioned that some developers were using a third-party server and/or domain to proxy requests to PayPal. It turns out that even those proxy requests no longer work (they did at some point), leaving one of the developers on that thread to conclude ‘I guess they are blocking PayPal at their (Google’s) gateway..’.
I don’t ordinarily troll, and this probably shouldn’t even be considered such, but are you serious Mr. Arrington?
I know this was written over a year ago, but I just uploaded a PayPal button and then took out some Google ads for the book I am selling. Immediately the Pay pal button fails and I have no access to Pay Pal. Now I am not one for conspiracy theories but what is going on here? I assumed the obvious sales technique was PayPal and Google Ads. When I removed the Google cookies and Apps. the problem went away.
Seems a little conspiracy theoryish. Probably some programmer just typed “paypal.com” in some list by mistake. Can easily happen.
If it really is a conspiracy and they always wanted to block Paypal, why are they unblocking it? It was only a matter of time before someone noticed this.
Doesn’t make sense for it to be a conspiracy. Nice FUD-spreading, Mike.
ya but that app engine logo is one of the coolest logos up in this mofo.
Google should be allowed to blacklist Paypal as Ebay is denying Checkout.
I would suspect they were trying to prevent THEMSELVES from behing a phishing site by making it so they couldn’t mimic the paypal site.
Andrew: multiple developers experienced the same issue and Google actually confirmed it
Chris: thats a fair point, but there are better ways of doing that without having to block Paypal
This will probably come down to being a bug, because I can’t help thinking that if they didn’t want AppEngine developers using PayPal they would just come out and say that as opposed to letting developers find out the hard way in code.
Sounds like a conspiracy theory, though I’ve got no issue with Google blocking Paypal, which is an awful payments platform. It would definitely be good to see Google Checkout get some more traction in this area, and perhaps gently nudging users of Google App Engine to use Checkout instead of Paypal will help that happen (and the web will be a better place because of it).
don’t be evil {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/vOLFtonCZ3_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”don’t be evil ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/uA4LyvWeYd”}}}
Hmmm…Letting developers build apps using Google APIs and blocking third party integration, seems like they want it all to themselves.
Love the logo by the way. PayPal getting sucked into the app engine turbine (and shredded) is one of the best visual metaphors I’ve seen in a long time. Good work
Speaking of Google (this is a little off topic), I’d like to do a little experiment to see how much google is still influenced by outside links: I’ve just checked and we’ve moved to rank #4 under the search term ‘Grow Smart’. Help us to get to no 1 with your grow smart link to our site smibs.com – that is if you like what we do
Nik: I believed it happened, I just question the idea that it was on purpose.
Great graphic
I think it’s awesome that Google is giving the finger to Paypal.
I would like to take this opportunity to let Google know that I would be more than happy to use their Checkout service, as would many others, but without support for recurring payments, it’s completely worthless to all internet companies who sell services (such as Clicky) instead of tangible goods. Nothing would make me happier than taking my business away from eBay/Paypal, but Google doesn’t want it, I guess. I’ve emailed them at least two different times about this and they’ve never given any meaningful reply.
its too cheap a prank to be a conspiracy. Oil at $150, now that’s a conspiracy !
Has someone tried to integrate it with Google Checkout? I bet that one isn;t blocked
WTF, this is garbage. Lets have some real tech news. This site is filled with trash.
Oh com’on!
You have hundreds of PHDs working for you and you call it oversight? That’s unacceptable in my opinion.
How can you expect Google to identify a problem with PayPal? PayPal isn’t part of the Google engine standard stack, so of course Google isn’t obligated to do any compatibility testing. This makes perfect sense and you can expect similar problems to arise in the future.
Of course, developers can avoid this problem by adhering to Google standards and moving everything to Google approved platforms and services. Luckily, the world doesn’t need Microsoft so enforce standardization with Google around.
I like the pic you put on the blog.
Uhh… Paypal’s API has been really flakey lately and we have contacted them several times that http://www.sandbox.paypal.com isn’t working correctly. I don’t it has anything to do with their competitive products. Maybe they blocked them but it wouldn’t be a good idea for either company to upset the developers.
This speculation is silly, even considering the bad blood lately. I could totally understand if Google wanted to force developers to use Google Checkout. I could also totally understand this being an unintentional bug (mistakes, even major ones, happen to even the smartest of developers on large pieces of software). But it makes no sense for Google to maintain a policy of *silently* blocking Paypal. This does nothing but hurt developers using their platform.
9/11 was an inside job!
This just in!
According to Google App Engine Groups, it’s a bug!
http://groups.g...059b0750c45703b
Hi,
Thanks for the report! This is a bug, and we have located the problem.
There was an error in our anti-phishing protections that was blocking
some specific URL domains from being fetched using the URLFetch
service. This was an oversight on our part, and these specific domain
restrictions will be removed in the next few days.
Thanks,
Marzia
Hope that settles it!
Google has apparently fixed the problem.
======
This issue has now been fixed. These URLs are now accessible with Google App Engine.
-Marzia
======
via http://groups.g...059b0750c45703b
This is a little off topic but I’m curious how many entrepreneurs reply to posts on techcrunch – any entrepreneurs in the house – Sean, Nik, Peter? If interested in some awesome literature for improving your skills:
http://www.read...ex.php?rta=blog
Google refuses to have any competition what so ever, Google will certainly do their best to promote Google Check out instead of letting PayPal get their customers.
- GaramBlog.com
Over zealous engineers or a senior exec masturbated all over the code.
Luckily, no one was hurt.
I went to pay for a won ebay item over the weekend via firefox and kept getting a “retry login” error that even after clearing cache and cookies I still cannot login via that browser. Reluctantly I opened IE and it worked perfectly. Right now, as I try to go to http://www.paypal.com I get a “Page not found” in the title bar and a “Click here to retry” link which just loops.
Most bizarre and most curious.
-Rex
So much for don’t be evil.
Even eBay at their competitive worst (back in the Billpoint days) never blocked PayPal.
Did anyone consider that maybe Paypal’s blocking Google (perhaps as a byproduct of some other nefarious scheme), and didn’t realize the implications on checkout. In exchange for Google keeping this quiet, PayPal is removing the block.
Out there, I know, but not impossible.
it would be nice if google would offer its checkout to merchants so that paypal and others will feel the pinch hence, they will offer better services due to high competition.
Well… if paypal, a big online ancient business was blocked by Google, so, everybody can be too…
Of course it was a bug… but one that they must have known about. But until anyone points it out they won’t do anything about it.
Remember how Microsoft was done in for so many “crimes”, I think it’s time Google too are taken to task.
And of course Google is developing program similar to Paypal named googlepay. Anything to do with the conflict of the interests??
Not a conspiracy, just an honest mistake, it would seem…
It indeed seems to have been a mistake.
So let’s get over it. We can speculate all day that it was a mistake or on purpose, but it seems to really be a bug, so it is no sense in making this bigger than it really is. No matter if they knew about it or not, this bug is gone, end of story.
I use PayPal and suggest it to my ecommerce web customers. I don’t use or recommend Google Checkout simply because Google is so good at hiding from people. If I have a problem with PayPal I can pick up a phone and call them and get immediate attention. This is very important to ecommerce because the site owners are often dealing with a live customer who does not want to and should not need to wait for an email response days later.
Just try to find a way to call Google about anything.
I will stick to Google for what they do best, search. I will stick to PayPal for what they do best, collect money from buyers.
It’s all well and good to branch out, but some branches need support and Google has none that I can find.
This will be the case if you build ur product which is in some one else’s hands. Apps engine should be good for time pass. But not for serious business.
I agree with Paul. Paypal are at least approachable. Google, with their ‘do no evil’ mantra, play havoc by being so secretive. I’m sure we’ve all heard of cases where google ‘just change’ their indexing algorithms without consultation. As owners of the their search engine, this of course becomes their prerogative, but in so doing, demonstrate an arrogance that stretches beyond their remit as a search engine.
I think Google should flex their muscle and keep paypal blacklisted. Tit for Tat, after two years Google is still prohibited from ebay but lesser known sites payment sites are allowed. It seems to me that they do not consider the alternative pay sites to be a threat to Paypal.