Google vs. eBay/PayPal 197
That's Unpossible! writes "Google has today made a small announcement on their blog which could shake up the landscape of buying things online : they are going to start allowing certain parties to sell items through Google Base, which people can buy using credit cards linked to their Google Account. According to another blog post, Google already accepts payments in this fashion for Google Video, Google Earth, Google Store, etc. How long until Google Base is directly competing with eBay? The framework is now in place."
This is nice but... (Score:4, Insightful)
- When buying the shop that has lots of selection will hold lower prices
- As a seller, I'm looking to get maximum exposure when I sell something.
Those two factors, I believe, will give google a pretty good run.
Erik
Re:This is nice but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft getting into the business financial software space
Microsoft getting into XXXX space
And the world thought the sky was falling, and Microsoft was going to take over everything and nobody else had a chance.
Ended up not being true. Away from their core businesses, Microsoft ended up being 'just another competitor'.
Will Google get away from their core, and have they same thing happen? Can the magic last?
eBay is very well entrenched...
Re:This is nice but... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This is nice but... (Score:3, Insightful)
A solid competitor, or at least the threat of one, might light the fire under ebay, and make *it* a better place.
Re:This is nice but... (Score:2)
I agree 100%, but I hope google lights a fire under Paypal more than Ebay. I get Paypal "policy updates" frequently and they almost always take away some protection for users or increase the protecton of Paypal's profits. I once had a vendor overcharge me $24 on Paypal and after six months of Paypal's investigation they finally agreed that it had been a mistake... and refunded me a whopping $0.
Re:This is nice but... (Score:4, Interesting)
In five years will google APIs be as ingrained in your average website as windows is ingrained in your average desktop application? Google will continue to provide the framework for that to happen, ASAP. Think of it as Windows 3.0, with 3.1 coming soon. Unless wikipedia suddenly morphs into free maps and free storefronts and free classifieds and free file hosting and free email and free search, I don't see an open alternative to Google's free--as in beer-- content. You can mock the betas the same way people mocked early versions of Windows, but have no doubt that now as then, developers will use what is cheap and easy and available. It doesn't matter if it's coming out of Mountain View or Redmond as long as it pays the rent. Moral qualms are for Stallman.
Re:This is nice but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, this doesn't mean that eBay will go bankrupt when Google becomes a real competitor; there's also the possibility that they will improve their service and lower their fees. Either outcome is fine with me; the problem is not so much eBay as such (i.e., they're not inherently more evil than other companies), it's the problem that they have no competition.
Ahh, least they forget (Score:2)
Re:This is nice but... (Score:3, Interesting)
I would welcome a service where I could sell my stuff that was better than ebay. Keep in mind that there are a ton of services (be it a kitchen remodeling company or a restaurant in your town) that are ripe to be smashed by someone who comes in with a new business and provides
Re:This is nice but... (Score:2)
Many Ebay Newbies looking for high dollar items get scammed. Almost all of the products that are very popular and expensive are at an amazing scammer to legit ratio. Simply look at items like the Canon XL1/XL2 most of those with really good prices are scammers (I know I spend months going through auctions I won tryin to get a camera... Most claim thay are out of the states and I need to send them CASH or wire funds to a friend in germany and refuse to use an escrow service.)
Ebay ne
customers, yes, but they aren't happy. (Score:2)
Consider that only a few years ago no one thought much of google and altavista was king.
Many dislike ebay, but have no alternative that has nearly as many users. google not only has the name brand, but the search engine - one that even ebay uses to draw in users.
Re:This is nice but... (Score:1)
Re:This is nice but... (Score:2)
Did I really get $60 worth of value from eBay and PayPal? They
I assume (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I assume (Score:1)
Re:I assume (Score:2)
whats the framework? (Score:2, Insightful)
why is ebay singled out? (Score:3, Interesting)
It does give folks another avenue that the ebay 'buy-it-now' provides, but there isn't anything within the google framework that does the auction thing.
I mean, amazon provides the flea market thing as well...
Re:why is ebay singled out? (Score:4, Informative)
The conclusion is that you can offer the best product in the world but if you have no visibility to your target audience, you won't sell.
Erik
Risky move (Score:1, Interesting)
eBay combined with Paypal currently is a fraudsters dream, its the worlds number 1 place to buy stolen (from burglary,robberys) merchandise and fake/counterfit goods, eBay try to keep a handle on it but with the shere size of the userbase and cashflow the incentive to crack down isnt really there and is probably impossible to stop,
iam suprised that the Police/FBI havent shut them down a long time ago for aiding and abetting, i guess that lobby money talks again
Re:Risky move (Score:2, Insightful)
No, they can not and will not do that. There is too much of a legitimate userbase for ebay, and too many people around the world (because, as you should know, ebay is available in many countries as a subsite tailored to that specific country, featuring auctions by people in those countries) who use it daily.
Besides, if they did shut it down, another would pop up to take it's pl
Re:Bullshit FUD (Score:3, Insightful)
I, for one (seriously) (Score:1, Informative)
Re:I, for one (seriously) (Score:5, Interesting)
I sold something on eBay, and opted to print out a UPS label, and pay for the shipping directly through their PayPal system. Started the process and everything was fine, I paid for it, and only needed to print the label out.
Crap! I didn't have the right kind of paper (I wanted to use label material) so I had to go find some in my wife's office.
By the time I got back, my session had timed out. I went back to my original eBay item, and followed the same process. Thinking that it would register as the same shipping/payment. Wrong, it charged me again.
Okay...fine, I'll just cancel the first one.
Can't cancel a shipping payment until UPS receives the electronic statement from PayPal. Okay, I'll check back the next day.
Whoops- can't cancel a shipping payment after 24 hours have passed.
eBay customer service did ONE thing for me when I contacted them about this. They confirmed that I was screwed.
$46 down the drain because their sessions time out too quickly. Fuck them...
Re:I, for one (seriously) (Score:2)
Re:I, for one (seriously) (Score:2)
That kind of response is actually very common when a company has no real competition or perceives of having no competition. Maybe this little shake-up will give them motivations to be more helpful.
Re:I, for one (seriously) (Score:2)
I'm curious though, did you try calling UPS again to cancel the shipment. Since no package was ever shipped, they should be able to cancel and refund the shipping to Paypal. Do remember to get their name and a reference number to the transaction. Paypal will be getting money back and you should be able to call paypal and say now that UPS has refunded
Re:I, for one (seriously) (Score:3, Informative)
The transaction was probably deemed to have completed the moment the "label" was displayed on your screen.
So you should have just printed it out anyway. Print to a file or print to an actual A4. You can then either print to the real label later, or photocopy to the real label depending on whether you do the former or latter.
Or save the page to print it out later (which is why javascript or flash tends to suck for this sort of thing
Paypal timeout is way too short (Score:2)
re; PayPal and shipping labels (Score:2)
This isn't even
Re:$46 lost for being silly with the PAPER (Score:2)
And guess what- 90% of my job is spent accounting for the sheer stupidity of users. It's called 'dummy proofing'.
In my opinion, that is what separates good programmers from bad programmers.
They will do it (Score:1)
Oh Noes! (Score:2)
g-pay? (Score:1)
Google is not evil (Score:2, Interesting)
So is google too big, yes but what does that mean?
Apparently they are so big, that when they do something in a certain market, all the other players are instantly obliterated. No this does not always happen, although this is what people think and expect I guess, basicly everyone is waiting for google to become evil, which is wierd.
In the end competition is good as long as there will remain competition.
Competition is a Good Thing (Score:5, Insightful)
* Drive to innovate
* Prices closer to the actual cost of the service
* External Innovators can become suppliers as the companies get creative to win market share.
This is a good thing (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe this move will force them to stop acting so arrogantly towards us, their customers. And try to provide some actual customer support.
Re:This is a good thing (Score:2)
It changes completely when a company pushes into the market of another company while having a more or less monopoly in their original market area.
Take Microsoft as an example. They do have a (more or less) monopoly in the commercial OS market. So when they decide to push into another market, they can afford to undercut their competitor, even going under their
All your base is overly broad (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:All your base is overly broad (Score:3, Insightful)
Attract sellers (Score:4, Insightful)
If Google treats sellers well, they'll be jumping ship from eBay in packs. I'm guessing eBay will lighten up on their sellers and the new equilibrium will be sellers using both services.
Competition is a good thing. More outlets for sellers is more business, also a good thing. I'd use Google before Amazon.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Attract sellers (Score:2)
Amazon is a ripoff. Just to see how well it worked, I tried Amazon once to sell a used book. After Amazon charged their fees and shorted me on the (fixed/mandatory) shipping stipend, I ended up making about three bucks on a $15 sale. Not even worth the time it took me to list it, much less pack and ship it.
PayPal have dug their own grave... (Score:4, Interesting)
I must admit, however, that having my personal information (name, CC, address) linked to my search queries seems like a profoundly bad idea... Even if that is still technically possible with my ISP I don't think they care enough, or it is in their best interests to do so. Google on the other hand...
Re:PayPal have dug their own grave... (Score:3, Interesting)
not just the user base (Score:1)
Re:not just the user base (Score:1)
If anything, Google is probably more recognizable to people in general. They are, at least, to ad execs. [zdnet.com]
Froogle! (Score:1)
ebay's success (Score:2)
Waiting for Google Store (Score:1)
Google seems to be headed towards this path, they just can't get there fast enough for me.
well that'd be a good start (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:well that'd be a good start (Score:2)
No, you have it backwards. Ebay actually is the solution. Autographs used to be artificially scarce because of the limits of geography. To use your hypothetical, do y
An alternative to PayPal would be very welcome (Score:2, Informative)
Re:An alternative to PayPal would be very welcome (Score:1)
Does anyone have any idea why Paypal wouldn't let me reset my account by e-mailing them scans of certain documents, requiring me to fax it to them instead? This is one reason why I may be switching to GooglePay - I'm not opening a new e-mail account so I can have a new PayPal account. I didn't forget my PayPal password, I just couldn't remember which of my many passwords it was, and I got locked out before I could guess the right one. Another e-mail account, another Pay
sounds great (Score:2)
countdown to the Googopoly: (Score:5, Funny)
Google Dollars: trade one-to-one with US currency a la Disney Dollars
Google History: send actual wireless webcams back in time and space to search history
Google Genes: pick your baby's DNA from Google's wide base of genetic data. Google Cyber-Implants: when you're *really* assimilated! Have the power of Google searches on tap in your own brain. Win every trivia game show. Ace every test. View porn just by thinking about it.
Re:countdown to the Googopoly: (Score:2)
I'll pass. I've got the much better, and less expensive Eye-Fi:
(Pick your video mirror)
http://www.devilducky.com/media/41533/ [devilducky.com]
http://www.funmansion.com/html/Eye-Fi.html [funmansion.com]
http://www.dumpalink.com/media/1138903828/Eye-Fi_ [dumpalink.com]
Poppycock (Score:4, Interesting)
eBay has traditionally always had competition, and if anything this only helped it grow even larger. Look at Yahoo and Amazon, they couldn't even take it. The fact is that eBay is a differenet company now, than before. It's shifted it's focus from being an "auction" site, to being a marketplace.
Google is a great speculator, and it really has to be with the way it's stock is. A tighter integration of eBay and Google would be an intelligent move, eBay is a proven company, with rising stock for the last 10 years, and continuing to post profits well above expectations. PayPal, like it or not, is still the most reliable and easiest way to pay for things, and I'm sorry, but I've used it for well over 100 transactions and unlike my credit card and bank account, I dont pay an annual fees as a customer, and as a seller, it's a lot cheaper than the cost of getting a merchant account.
The point is this, eBay stands to lose ground in the market it's saturated. Google will have to figure out how to deal with fraud, customer/seller debate and at the same time promote it's product in a non-competitive manner such that it doesn't lose it's main advertiser.
Short of that, if Google decides to lock horns with eBay, I'm pretty sure you'll see eBay take a cut in it's stock to retain and regrow it's own markets. Competition is healthy, but I really doubt that this is anything more than posturing.
On an aside, pick a popular product, Froogle it, most of the vendors I've dealt with have had huge problems, lie or deliberately mislead me on price. Now add 10 million amateurs, wannabes, and fraudsters, and tell me that I can reasonably expect a better experience than eBay.
Re:Poppycock (Score:4, Interesting)
There are two problems with your logic:
1) There's a reason eBay can spend 10M+ on Google Adwords. It makes far, far more. In 2004 [forbes.com], eBay had 3.3 billion in sales, and 780M in profits! Google needs less than 2% of the market to make up for the loss of advertising. Google has the brand awareness to easily grab 2% of that market.
2) It would assume eBay can afford to stop advertising with Google to get revenge upon Google. They can't. They would be shooting themselves in the foot, and giving Google Base more marketshare and more profits (see 1).
I think its more likely you'll see Google Base pages with Adword advertisements for eBay in the margin.
Re:Poppycock (Score:2)
Re:Poppycock (Score:2)
Even if Google does do exactly what eBay is doing, eBay will have to advertise more. If you're searching Google, and all you get are Google Auction results, you're going to forget about eBay completely. If th
Re:Poppycock (Score:2)
Well, mostly good... (Score:5, Interesting)
I do believe that it would be nice to get some real competition going for these companies - and perhaps Google has the chutzpah [wikipedia.org] to pull it off (not to mention the cash). I, for one, would love to see some new ideas in the auction/sell/pay space. It could also keep the costs of these services relatively in check, as well.
It costs a very large percentage of a sale to sell something on eBay (that is, unless you are a super-seller who can get away with selling an item for
Re:Well, mostly good... (Score:2)
For me, the only reason eBay is successful is that it's successful... It's the biggest; you can find most things there; yada yada. But the interface is god-awful. Give me some clean HTML, make an attempt to reduce "SUPER COOL PRODUCT!!! NO RESERVE!!! L@@K!!", clean up the actual product pages to be somewhat consistent, and it would be no contest. Except that everyone still uses eBay. Chicken and egg.
I haven't personally experienced the pain of selling items, but I've heard several people complain abou
Re:Well, mostly good... (Score:2)
Not quite. Google has become _the_ brand name for searches. It would not surprise me if "Googling" outlives Google.
Kleenex has become the brand name for tissues, as Jello for gelatin, and Fridigidaire for "fridges".
PayPal does not have that feeling, and never will.
eBay is pretty m
Re:Well, mostly good... (Score:2)
A fad? eBay, Inc. was incorporated in 1995 [wikipedia.org]. Google, Inc. was incorporated in 1998 [wikipedia.org]. It's been around much longer than Google, and survived the dotcom bubble. It's not a fad.
And you've never used, or heard anyone say "I'm going to eBay that piece of junk?" I hear it all the time, about as much as someone saying they googled something. That kind of branding is a company's wet-dream.
Re:Well, mostly good... (Score:2)
No. I "used" eBay once, got ripped off from some dude in China, and never looked back.
I love the choice phrase you picked "I'm going to eBay that piece of junk".
That is pretty much what eBay is and is known for. Junk. Fees. No accountability. If you want accountability, you have to pay a 3rd party escrow service. Returns, support? Nothing.
I've known people that "made it rich" by going to the dollar store, and selling th
And steadily, inch-by-inch... (Score:1, Troll)
Don't tell me about that "Do No Evil" thing - it's just a neat marketing slogan.
googlebay (Score:1)
Just make Google Auctions and be done with it. (Score:1)
Hmmm... Is that GBuy? (Score:1)
Buyers Beware (Score:1)
Re:Buyers Beware (Score:2)
Heh, just about made me snort coffee onto my monitor! I'd give you "+1 Funny" if I had the mod points!
I'd like to see an alternative to PayPal, but... (Score:2)
Obviously, without a court order, eBay won't let GPay (or whatever it's called) be used on the auction site. I use PayPal once every two or three months, and mostly for eBay.
Re:I'd like to see an alternative to PayPal, but.. (Score:2)
You may not have noticed, but it's not up to eBay how buyers pay the sellers. You could demand payment in nickels, or mcdonalds coupons. Clearly they push PayPal, and offer the incentive of tight integration to get people to use it, but they can neither force you to use paypal, nor be forced to tightly integrate a thrid-party payment scheme.
Re:I'd like to see an alternative to PayPal, but.. (Score:2)
Hogwash. I challenge you to quote (and link) the relevant eBay page that says they prohibit Western Union transfers. The most they do is warn against using it, something Western Union itself also warns you against, as a money transfer has no fraud protection.
Google's long term business plan (Score:1)
Not that this is a bad thing mind you, I thought the concept quite cool, but rather its interesting to see a straight sci-fi concept taken and built in reality (okay, with a few minor differences since google's primary engine still searches other sites instead of holding all data, but the main concept is still the same).
Mottos (Score:3, Funny)
pfft, PayPal has nothing, except your money.
Re:Mottos (Score:2)
great (Score:2)
fees. (Score:2)
Ebay's success (Score:2)
Ebay is a monopoly. (Score:2, Interesting)
This does not make for a healthy marketplace.
There is of course competition between sellers, but if ebay raises prices, makes it impossible to find items by completely eliminating categories, or decides that it'd rather heavily weight the market towards those who pay for featured ads, the users have no comeback, other than to not use ebay.
They can't just go to the 2nd highest auction site in many cases, as there effectively isn't one.
Competition would
Re:Ebay is a monopoly. (Score:2)
Re:Ebay is a monopoly. (Score:2)
God, my eyes bleed everytime I visit Ebay or Amazon.
I would say never (Score:2)
Paypal is bad, but credit cards are worse (Score:2, Interesting)
As bad as you think the PayPal and EBay fees are, they a dwarfed by the blood credit cards suck out of our economy.
I'm not talking about the interest on unpaid accounts, I'm talking about the merchant fees. Those are the 2 to 6 percent fees that every merchant pays on credit card transactions.
These fees are hidden from the consumer, because the credit card mafia forces retailers to charge the same price for cas
Froogle is crap (Score:3, Interesting)
First off, there are people who spam the system with thousands of items (often directly, or redirecting to Amazon) where they say they're cheaper than everyone else. When you click on it, instead of being "$40", it is actually "$50". Often the first three or four links are spam like this - you can buy the item, but you're told it's one price and then it's another. When you e-mail Froogle help to report this fraud, they are very slow to respond, if they ever respond.
Another thing is Froogle has started this stupid thing where they group items together, so if yous search for say "onetouch ultra strips", you'll get a first response where it says "Compare 47 prices" currently. But when I click on that I see not only OneTouch Ultra strips but Basic Profile strips, and Surestep strips. I click on the 2nd link, "OneTouch SureStep Test Strips, 50 ea" from Drugstore.com, and nowhere in that page does it say Ultra. Now if I put Ultra in my search, and there are dozens of pages which have those 3 words in my search, why am I being redirected to a page that does not have Ultra? This is not a case of spam, this is a case of Google screwing up.
I actually have a store that has Froogle entries, people get redirected to my store on a false thing like this (the ultra to drugstore.com surestep thing), buy it and then want to cancel their credit card sale or want to send it back, because they think I screwed up somehow, when actually it was Froogle and they who screwed up. Froogle should get rid of this stupid, broken new system and put back the old system where when you looked for the word ultra you'd actually wind up with a product or blurb that had the word ultra in it. I'm using "onetouch ultra strips" as an example, but this goes across many products.
These are both major problems, so I won't even go into minor ones like how they're rating system for merchants has problems. The thing about Froogle is both of the problems I mentioned are new - their search system was working fine until they added this new grouping thing which doesn't work and which I'm sure no one likes. Don't put it out there until it works. And spammers were not around, but now they are, and Froogle doesn't deal with them. If they wait a week to deal with them each time, then they will never go away - if they can get a few hundred sales for each week on the fake prices, I'm sure the spammers will just set up a new storefront each week and make a ton of money. They should fix what's broken instead of coming out with whiz-bang new features every few months. Respond to e-mails about people spamming with fake low prices.
in use (Score:2)
Given Yahoo's Auction success (Score:2)
I might buy off another auction site if the prices are lower, that's about it. I'm more likely to find what I want on eBay than anywhere else.
Google to Ebay (Score:2)
Artificial Intelligence (Score:2)
You heard it here first!
Re:Google has a larger user base than E-bay/Paypal (Score:2)
Re:FDIC (Score:2)
Re:Focus... (Score:4, Interesting)
Years later, we have google bundling all sorts of seperate software together, and constantly raising the price on them because there are no competitors. When some little search engine tries to get it's website registered, Google threatens to cut off ICANNs balls, and boom, that little search website only gets to be used via IP address. The list of abuses is insane.
And when that antitrust lawsuit was filed, who would have thought the DOJ prosecutor would be assassinated with a carbomb?
Re:Focus... (Score:2)
Google may wind up being nasty, but right now they've got more brains running around than MSFT did in its early days and they're producing consistently impressive stuff. I dunno about the rapid growth thing -- seems that if you grow really fast, you acquire a lot of assholes clinging to you on the way up -- but until they start to suck, I say enjoy.
Re:Focus... (Score:2)
Google's lone boycott of China wasn't hurting the Central Committee. And so far, it's the one mark against, no one can even name anything else.
They're the company I wish I could work for, if only I weren't a loser. Every time I hear some twerp on Digg rant about how ugly Google Video is, I want to smack some sense into them (I for one like simple websites). Oh well.
Maybe I should stop trying to be sarcastic on here.
Re:Focus... (Score:2)
Re:Google, QUIT SCREWING AROUND! GCalendar NOW! (Score:2)
Re:Buying used stuff is gross (Score:2)
Excluding some extreme exceptions or maybe the occational flu, sexual activity or "unnatural" transfers of blood are about the on