Another Google Tool To Take On PayPal?

An anonymous reader writes to mention a ZDNet post about another possible product in the grand Google vision. The product, Google Checkout, may be an attempt to go after PayPal. From the article: "Since we know Google is behind its registration, what is Google Checkout going to be? I think it will be a shopping cart system to help websites accept payment for their items online. The money site owners make will be deposited into a holding account at Google -- just like AdSense works. Isn't this starting to sound a lot like PayPal? Who knows, they could even offer a Google branded Mastercard "debit card" like PayPal's ATM/Debit Card -- after all, the domain googlemastercard.com is registered to Google too."

You midunderstand

Google Checkout is Google's new dating service. They let you check-out other singles in your area.

A Whole New Meaning

Adds a whole new meaning to "I'm Feeling Lucky" now, doesn't it?

Re:A Whole New Meaning

You call yours Lucky?

Re:A Whole New Meaning

Or, as a guy in college said when a girl walked by, "I wouldn't kick that girl out of bed for eating crackers....would I, 'Crackers'?" (patting his crotch at the appropriate time.

Making such a mistake so early in his college career (first week of school) and earning the nickname of Crackers. When addressed as such, the ladies wanted to know the derivation and he always had to tap dance around it.

As a reasonably small (1'900 students), midwestern, non-denominational Christian university, there were a lot of sensitive ears and everyone knew everyone else. Should he have responded honestly to the wrong person, he might have found his social life a bit empty for some time.

(But it was still fun to watch him deal with the name across a couple of years)

Re:You midunderstand

Have you ever wondered if Google just registers domains, then waits for the Googlewatching community to post punditry on what it might be, then decide what to do with it? Stranger things have happened.

This could only be a good thing

Perhaps they can make a paypal that actually doesn't suck [paypalsucks.com]. After all Google isn't supposed to be evil.

Re:This could only be a good thing

I don't see how it could suck more or be more evil then paypal. If MS ends up buying paypal/ebay as it's rumored then all the more so reason to use Google.

As a corporation I trust google much more then I trust ebay/paypal or MS or even Visa for that matter.

Re:This could only be a good thing

Paypal treats anyone outside the US like dirt, so it'd be great to have an alternative.

Think about what they'd have done if you *had* shipped that laptop. Would they have taken responsibility for their mistake? I doubt it. It's easy not to suck if you only look at the best case scenarios.

Re:This could only be a good thing

It's easy not to suck if you only look at the best case scenarios.

Very true. It's also hard not to suck if you only look at the worst cases, as that site listed above clearly does.

if this happens...

If Microsoft buys eBay and Paypal, I'm going to cancel my account immediately. If Google comes up with a competing service, that'd be great.

Failing that, what's a decent alternative to Paypal?

Re:if this happens...

What are your reasons for canceling your account if MS takes them over?

Re:if this happens...

Gee, would you want your bank account directly accessable by a company with the security and privacy record of Microsoft?

If they acquired PayPal, they would convert it over ot MS servers, just like they did Hotmail.

This Just In

The janitor at Google bought a new mop. Someone post it to the slashdot frontpage.

Re:This Just In

All you need to know is that it wasn't an evil mop, and that the domain googlemops.com [googlemops.com] has not yet been registered.

Google Checkout?

Im sure it can't compete with the One-Click checkout :)

great!

this would be great, I know from personal experience that running merchant systems is a major pain the neck. This particularly the case when you are a programmer trying to break into to the world of running your own business. Merchant and credit card systems that exist are really dev friendly and extremely expensive for the most part. The system I current use is propay.com just because it is so simplistic for my small site.

*sigh* more speculation

The problem with the article is that it's basing an awful lot on just a domain name. I could think of many other things it *could* be, like a shopping store, an auction site a la ebay, and more. It could also be a simple ecommerce software site, which I think is the most likely. My biggest counter to the argument for a paypal site is if this Google Checkout is a commercial venture like PayPal, why haven't they snabbed GoogleCheckout.com?

Re:*sigh* more speculation

If you read the article more closely, you'll see that the author came to the conclusion that the company that owns googlecheckout.com is directly tied to the one that is known to work with Google. In that sense, googlecheckout.com is already owned by Google.

In any event, this may or may not happen. It may not be anything more than Google noticing online rumors about it possibly starting a PayPal-like service and then deciding to buy the domain either to keep its options open or to prevent phishers or squatters from getting it. Or it could be as the parent described. It certainly would fit in with some aspects of Google Base, but people have made many persuasive arguments for what Google should do and then not see the company do it. After all of the furor over GDrive.com a few months ago, there's still not anything up on that page. Maybe, maybe not. I'll believe it when I see it. Google is second only to Apple when it comes to unsubstatiated/bogus romors.

Keeping the dogs out of the internet ...

Google's money spinning machine has just one huge flaw. You geeks know that. By design nobody can tell which of those clicks on ads are from real people and which ones are from dogs (and monkeys and bots).

They are not fighting PayPal. They want to charge customers not for delivering clicks but for delivering customers. If the clickers on the ads actually use their checkout service to buy then who cares if the clicker is a dog or a bot. It is a dog who has cash to spend.

Somebody call ZDNet...

...and tell this blogger that googlewildspeculation.com [domaintools.com] is still available.

Google acting like... Google.

You must remember, this is google we are talking about. World domination isn't world domination unless you own a pay-pal like service.

There is no real competition to PayPal

Right now, there is no real competition to PayPal. By competition, I mean an alternative service that charges the same level of percentage per sale.

There are a lot of PayPal type players out there, with much more evolved services, but they all charge 5-12% on every deal, which is too brutal. If google could match paypal's percentages and offer a nicer service, PayPal would suffer greatly.

A big list of upcoming services

Google registered a domain, so therefore they must be planning a service around it? Wow. Let's take a look at some other domains [searchenginewatch.com] Google has registered...

Gbrowser.com - I wonder how that's doing.
Googleblows.com - Hm.. so much to speculate on.
Googledoodle.com - A drawing platform, maybe?
Googleporn.com - It's about time!

Here's my favorite: Googlemotherf**ker.com.

Google regularly buys domain names just so others won't. The fact that they bought googlecheckout.net might just mean they don't want someone else masquerading as a Google checkout service.

No Thanks.

I love Google for the most part, and use a great deal of their free products - search (duh), Google Desktop Search, Froogle, Google Maps, Google Notebook, etc.

However, I do not trust them with my money. I had the same experience with Google Adsense that many people have had - account frozen and terminated with no explanation and no possibility for appeal right before my first check was due. I never saw a penny.

Realistically, I'm sure that Checkout will be handled by a different internal group within Google. I don't know if they'll have the same "we'll take your money with no explanation" attitude as the Adsense group. But you can count me right the heck out.

Also, for the record... while PayPal horror stories also abound, I've had no problem with them even after several thousand transactions. I'm quite happy with them. If Google Checkout is a PayPal competitor, I know which side I'm on. Until convinced otherwise.

Re:No Thanks.

The problems with adsense are just as anecdotal as those with PayPal. I haven't had any issues with either, but it just pays to pay attention. Google has gotten a little on the big side, so it pays to be as wary as with buying into a product of any company of that size, like Microsoft or AT&T.

Re:No Thanks.

I agree that the problems are anecdotal. My experiences are just one more data point and should of course be taken with the appropriately grain of salt.

PayPal does, at least, have some semblence of an appeals process. Although it's said to be quite lacking to say the least, at least it exists. They also tend to give some kind of reason as to what the problem was when payments are canceled and/or accounts are frozen.

Google seems shadier. Now, as you say, this is anecdotal. But Adsense account freezes almost always seem to take place right before the first check is due to be cut. In my case I had AdSense ads up for 2-3 months and generated quite a chunk of change for Google before they conveniently pulled the plug right before cutting me a check. I wound up with nothing. I'm not sure if they detected "suspicious" clicks on my Adsense ads or what, but they nullified all my earnings. Surely the vast majority of those earnings weren't suspicious.

Re:No Thanks.

account frozen and terminated with no explanation and no possibility for appeal

And that's worse than what PayPal does to many people... how? PayPal has done much worse, with actual money for sales and services. Real money that is in their account, not just the couple of bucks they supposedly "earned" through advertising.

I know what it is

Garett Rogers has it all wrong.

Google maybe setting up a new and improved Froogle with Store Fronts similar to Yahoo Shopping.

"Google Checkout" could be used for stores in froogle to accept payments.

Response to Microsoft's impending eBay buyout?

Perhaps this is Google's response to the recent news regarding Microsoft's interest in acquiring eBay [slashdot.org], which owns PayPal.

Personally, I wouldn't be surprised to see a new google channel that directly competes with eBay's online marketplace in the near future.

GoogleWiki

Why don't we see that already?

Stop speculating.

What's with all the speculation about what google is going to do next? So they own a few domains... they've had gbrowser.com for like a year now... it means squat.

If you were a company with lots of money in the bank, wouldn't you register domain names for 10 bucks a pop that have your name in them, to prevent squatters and to keep your options open? I'm sure google has hundreds of domains, and not all of them will turn out to be new google ideas at all...

My guess..

My guess is that its a service to allow, among other things, detecting which click throughs on Ad-Sense actually result in sales (by performing those sales directly) and basing the advertising charge on that as commision, which would at the very least solve the problem of fradulent click-throughs.

Lack of integration with ebay will kill it

I think Google would have an extraordinarily difficult time becoming the "de-facto" standard for online payments through ebay, considering PayPal is deeply entrenched within the ebay framework. I'd have to imagine the market for other person-to-person micropayments outside of online auctions isn't very large.

here we go again ......

Is it just me, or - with the exception of the fact that it mentioned neither belltower nor grassy knoll - did that whole article read like Yet Another Conspiracy Theory?

You knew it was coming..

Using your internet connection to find a hot date through Google.com; $50/m Trying to impress her by dining at the fanciest restaurant in town; $350 Telling the waiter to "Stick it on your Google"... Priceless!

Google's tool chain groweth

Recently Google put out a version of Picasa for Linux, and a version of Google Earth for Linux is not too far away. They've also released something like 200 patches to the WINE project recently.

It seems that Google is slowly developing all these apps which can port easily, and are tied to Google's network.

(speculation)
I initially thought that Google will develop it's own OS and with it's existing clout with Dell, try and push that onto consumer PC boxes, dislodging windows. That may be one option. OTOH, who thinks that Google is beating out MS simply because they are more trusted? Perhaps Google cannot get away with a full end to end Google OS for the same reason that Microsoft cannot "do a Google" without falling into the same trap. In a way you could say that Google needs Microsoft, but Microsoft doesn't need Google.
(end of speculation)

isn't there something like this besides PayPal

If I had to say, it sounds a lot more like Yahoo! Stores than PayPal:
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/merchant/ [yahoo.com]

probably maybe less fees.

Google's Variety

Google's greatest strenght (outside from the obvious powerful seach engine) is that it is offering so many internet servies (or is developing them). Paypal equivalent service would be just another way for Google to expand - logically at that. Imagine the revenue if you first gain money for the ad - and then the money from the person who clicked the ad's purchase of the item!

Adsense integration

I hope there will be an integration with adsense, and that you can move funds from adsense to checkout. Unfortunately, this small step is missing for other sevices i.e. google store...

Actually...

... the speculation is wayyyyy off. This is Google's premiere new service to search for, comment on, and provide tutorials for creative suicide methods.

Googlezon, ASSEMBLE!

Form search and services, form tools and backbone, and I'll form the network!

GOOGLEZON, ASSEMBLE!

http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2004/11/29/summ ary_of_the_world_googlezon.htm [masternewmedia.org]

Suicide...

Clearly a new site to allow people to leave suicide notes to their friends and family...

See the Fish! [youtube.com]

I liked Google better...

...when they were doing things that other companies weren't doing, than when they were "taking on" other companies.

Nice

Is it all that trustworthy? I mean PayPal or Google or whoever else? In my country goverment is guaranteeing and protecting your money only in banks, other non-bank companies can easily bankrupt and nobody will return your money.

maybe not..

I love Google... I must use a dozen Google services. But do I want Google to have an archive of all my email, my searching habits, AND my real name and credit card number? I think not.

I hope that...

This service will be available in the Philippines. It would really make a killing with all the IT freelancers.

fine by me

google tends to do a good job when they create products and I'm not a big fan of how paypal is so I hope they do it

This isn't new speculation

Rumors of a Google replacement for paypal have been around for a long time now [google.com].

...and for the record Paypal thinks the learning curve associated w/ dealing with all the fraud issues will give it a huge compettive advantage [theregister.co.uk] over Google and they may have a good point. I think we can all agree that Google hasnt exactly handled all the click fraud complaints in an ideal manner which doesnt bode well for all the problems that will inevitably spring up w/ online payment.

Re:Does anyone else have a sense that...

"Does anyone else have a sense that the next 5 years are going to be really interesting?"

The next five years are always interesting.

Re:googleregistersalotofdomains

My theory is that because this comment was so high up there, it influenced tagging. That was my intent at least ;-). I can personally debunk (With no proof whatsoever) the perl script theory. At least not from the OP (me). I was shocked to see the tag there, actually, haha. I didn't think it would ever get tagged enough to make it to the top.

If you don't believe that I'm the OP, don't bother replying. Nobody cares.