PayPal vs Google(Buy) 242
pc-facile.com writes "While Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt confirmed in press accounts that the company was building a payment service, Mr. Schmidt also denied it would directly compete with PayPal. Mr. Schmidt said Google didn't intend to offer a "person-to-person, stored-value payments system," which many people consider a description of PayPal's service. Mr. Jordan (PayPal chief) says he and his team immediately "dissected the wording" of Google's statements. He says he doesn't believe Mr. Schmidt..." There's also a more in depth WSJ article about the service.
Why Bite the Hand that Feeds? (Score:5, Interesting)
But what I don't understand is the resulting system... what could it possibly consist of if it can't compete against PayPal? Perhaps they will use PayPal's services within the scope of the new system and defer customers to PayPal for the actual transactions? Partnerships happen when companies fear retaliation or when companies see greater profits by working together, and I think it's possible that is what's going on, in this case. Either that or we'll be seeing a very crippled new system from Google.
Re:Why Bite the Hand that Feeds? (Score:4, Funny)
They certainly have the capacity and hold enough information about each of us in the magical cookie.
Pay per click brought to life.
I'm sorry, this link is not available. Please ensure your paypal account is topped up
HTTP status code 402 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why Bite the Hand that Feeds? (Score:5, Interesting)
I digs the paypal (Score:3, Funny)
Also, you do not need to get a paypal account to pay for an item over paypal using a regular old credit card -- and then only the credit card TOS is relevant to you. So he didn't lose a sale because he has a paypal account, he lost a sale because of your ideology.
And really, boycotts rarely affect anyone but the boycotters.
Re:I digs the paypal (Score:3, Informative)
What finially got to me was that in order to receive a credit card payment, they force you to upgrade your account to their "Premier" level, which then skims a percentage off of all your incoming transactions (I think it's 3%), regardless of whether or not they're credit-card based.
For someone who only does a small percentage of credit-card business, this is a real scam. I know that the credit card companies charge fees. I
Re:I digs the paypal (Score:2)
Re:I digs the paypal (Score:2)
Re:Why Bite the Hand that Feeds? (Score:4, Interesting)
On a similar rant, I generally won't do business with anyone on eBay who doesn't explicitly say that they will accept US Postal Money Orders. Personally, I prefer to use Paypal, but accepting USPS money orders is the gold standard for any merchant in my book. Why? In my book, anyone that won't accept such money orders is a potential fraudster, afraid of the law. If anyone screws around with a transaction that involves a USPS MO, it turns into a mail fraud case.
Re:Why Bite the Hand that Feeds? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why Bite the Hand that Feeds? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yes! (Score:3, Informative)
mighn't (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Why Bite the Hand that Feeds? (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, even if Paypal weren't the evil beast people proclaim it to be, it has still stifled the online payment market through its outragous fees for transactions. Payments of less than £1.00 are worthless.
If Google can provide a viable model for micropayments it could take over a different sector of the market by catering to the smaller purchasers.
Of course, I'd be just as happy if Google pounded Paypal into the dirt.
Re:Why Bite the Hand that Feeds? (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope google kicks their ass. Hell, I hope google sets up its own auction site.
Re:Why Bite the Hand that Feeds? (Score:5, Informative)
I have a merchant account and while the fees are lower than PP they are still a total rip off. Perhaps it's cheaper on the US side of the pond but over here in the home country (sorry) if you are shifting less than £5000 worth of stock a month you probably would be better off with PP. Having said that, I think a real merchant account makes a business more professional looking so there are some pay backs.
I'm going to go back to dreaming about selling £5k worth of stock in a month.
Re:Why Bite the Hand that Feeds? (Score:5, Insightful)
A non-interactive virtual terminal would suit the industry much more. Example: Paypal system current use their (PayPal's) trustworthiness and not the business, since it hides the consumers CC from us. A virtual terminal would need to be approved based on such things as credit ratings to avoid shady business from over-charging or errounously charging customers CC's because with a Virtual terminal we (the business) have the CC # in order to process this.
What would be more beneficial would be to have a combination of the two - allowing the customer to check-out, provide their personal information and CC information. Then when we've determined tha exact amount to charge, we'd access the limited virtual terminal. Enter the amount to be charged, the customer receives a confirmation email asking them to accept or deny the charges. They accept and we get paid.
I'm sure this has potential holes in it yet, but the foundation of what it could pave in regards to new doors opening for lower level new businesses, and home based businesses that have concepts that are working, but do not have the credit history to back it up with conventional means.
For the professionalism alone I'd pay .25 extra per transaction. The demand is there, it's just time until someone with the large bank account can deploy it. Hopefully this will be Google.
Re:Why Bite the Hand that Feeds? (Score:2)
So set up a website that keeps track of inventory in real time. If an item is out of stock, let them know before they check out. Knowing exactly how much you're paying at the time of checkout is a good thing. Once,
Re:Why Bite the Hand that Feeds? (Score:5, Informative)
And they make plenty of money off the float. However, they end up returning it to you -- in exchange for your social security number and other personal details -- if you elect to "invest" in the PayPal money market. They pay something like 4.28% which is the highest paying money market fund available right now. Until now, they charged nothing to you for administrating the account but soon they're going to lop 0.25% off for administration which is still cheap.
Paypal has obvious costs for credit card transactions but I'd like to see a business account where cash (paypal funds) or check transactions were discounted or free. The limit the personal accounts to the point where they're nearly useless.
Re:Why Bite the Hand that Feeds? (Score:2)
Do you really think Google will let you sell goat porn through their service?
Re:Why Bite the Hand that Feeds? (Score:2)
Joking aside, though, I totally agree. PayPal stole about $1200 from me a few years back. If nothing else, we need something in the micropayment sector. Considering the ad revenue they already get, they probably could operate entirely without fees, provided the CC rates don't become an issue. Account-to-account stuff, at least, should be fine - put $10 in your account, and you've got a hundred 10c paymen
Re:Why Bite the Hand that Feeds? (Score:2)
As much as my gut reaction is to agree, I think that having two (at least) major players would be better and perhaps lower costs for their services.
Re:Why Bite the Hand that Feeds? (Score:5, Interesting)
Google's MO is exploiting content & social relationships to sell ads. A Google money service would use the same techniques to maximize loan returns or to target ads.
Think about it, as an advertiser, I could potentially use Google to target results to people with $x in their checking accounts.
Re:Why Bite the Hand that Feeds? (Score:5, Insightful)
The virtual wallet metaphor has been tried many times with no success, but Google has the clout and expertise to do it. There are thousands of web publishers that want to charge 2c to read a page (NYTimes?) but have no effective means to do so. A micropayment system might even be a necessary prerequisite to a hosted applications model -- some prognosticators are convinced Google will begin selling PCs with a Linux-based OS, hosting applications on a subscription or pay-per-use model. Would you pay 1c every time you opened Google's continuall-improved word processor?
Also, Google enjoys loads more user trust than Paypal. I've moved over $10,000 through Paypal, but they wouldn't lift a finger to help me when I was the victim of a $500 fraud. There are many stories of unduly locked/suspended accounts and a severe lack of investigatory dur diligence on Paypal's part. If Google brings a "Do No Evil" alternative payment system, you better believe I'll switch.
Finally, eBay might not like Google developing a competitor to Paypal (assuming it actually will be... RTFA), but eBay's bread and butter is listing and final value fees, not Paypal transaction charges. I'd bet eBay is much more concerned about Google Base than about a payment system. Of course, the combined threat (of Google Base and a Google Payments) is massive.
roderickm
Re:Why Bite the Hand that Feeds? (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. Paypal could eliminate much of the incentive to produce an alternative by simply eliminating the $0.35 charge. The 2.9% is (barely) bearable, but the fixed-price charge eliminates the entire world of micropayments.
Additionally, when they started charging percentages for both personal accounts, a requirement to deal in any significant amount of money, they made a lot of people's shit lists. Paypal needs to get aggressive about being viewed as cost-effective at all price levels - their relatively high percentage rate and fixed minimal fee causes them to only be attractive to a general audience (which is most of the potential world) for a narrow price range. If a company can't make a profit by skimming a single penny from every online transaction then the problem is internal to the company.
Re:Why Bite the Hand that Feeds? (Score:5, Informative)
That old MP argument is not going to hold up forever:
PayPal Announces Micropayment pricing:
http://www.paypal.com/activate_micropayments_5pct
On August 31st, 2005, PayPal announced new Micropayments rate of 5% + $0.05 per transaction.
The rate is available now, to U.S. merchants who sell digital content to U.S. customers, when PayPal is the sole payment solution offered to customers for micropayments transactions.
Merchants who wish to use PayPal's micropayments pricing will need to open a new PayPal account through the account registration link at the bottom of this note.
Each PayPal account is associated with only one merchant processing rate. That rate determines the fee that's applied to funds received into that account (additional information on PayPal's Standard Fees is available at: http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display
If you wish to leverage PayPal's micropayments pricing, please open a new browser window and paste the link below into the URL field to open your new PayPal account with micropayments pricing of 5% + $0.05.
Re:Why Bite the Hand that Feeds? (Score:2, Informative)
The last straw for me was a little ($50) transaction where the buyer was using fraudulent bank data. Two months later, I got an email from paypal telling me this had happened, which was news to me. So I had the $50 removed from my account. A nuisance, and perhaps unreasonable as they had failed to verify the data; I wasn't given their banking records to check, but it was my fault wh
Re:Why Bite the Hand that Feeds? (Score:5, Interesting)
No. I'm happy with OpenOffice, and despite what Microsoft tries to tell us every other year, word processors have not improved substantially since Office 97, and are certainly not worth the $200 or whatever the hell MS is charging nowadays.
But for services that require work to keep current, such as Google Maps, or hosted apps without a good open-source alternative, I would be happy to pay.
Re:Why Bite the Hand that Feeds? (Score:3, Interesting)
The virtual wallet metaphor has been tried many times with no success, but Google has the clout and expertise to do it.
Oooooh!, so that is why the actual music shops charge $1 for each song now uh? I hope Google hurry up with its micropayment thing, I am *sure* Music companies will be really glad to cut
Re:Why Bite the Hand that Feeds? (Score:2)
In a word, NO.
Sounds like a way to get nickel and dimed [answers.com] to death.
Re:Why Bite the Hand that Feeds? (Score:2, Insightful)
It will most likely be a Paypal/MS Passport/Yahoo Wallet type service where you can shop online but only have to give out your card information to a single company.
Re:Why Bite the Hand that Feeds? (Score:2)
Google doesn't need eBay, eBay needs Google. And, PayPal wouldn't have anything to worry about if they didn't have so many customer service issues. What would be the reason for people to bail from PayPal? PayPal's service sucks and is over priced. So, maybe it's PayPal that needs to shape up?
But what I'm wondering is, so Google starts a payment service. Would eBay (who owns PayPal) have to allow sellers / buyers to use
Re:Why Bite the Hand that Feeds? (Score:3, Insightful)
They definitely would have to let 'em use it - or face sudden competition from all the ebay-wannabes that were suddenly more attractive because of their acceptance of gPay.
Re:Why Bite the Hand that Feeds? (Score:2)
The only thing that keeps eBay from crashing an buring is that nobody else has the billion war chest needed to undercut them, out-advertise them and otherwise build up a significant userbase... until Google floated.
eBay simply cannot risk annoying Google by locking out their payment system. All Google has to do is
Unfounded wild speculation... (Score:2)
The obvious: Google will develop its own auction site, and combine it with its own payment service, and spin it off into a wholly owned subsidiary which eventually eats eBay and PayPal through a hostile takeover...
perhaps (Score:3, Insightful)
if they have been trial running it with merchants who sell stuff, perhaps they will only take payments from people and to businesses, not multiple individual to individual payments.
or something akin to microsofts original idea for 'microsoft wallet' where google keeps your cc info private to them, and authorizes payments to individual merchants in aggregate..
or micropayments tracked by google, billed to you every X days, (or paid in advance)
Yes, please. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Yes, please. (Score:2)
Re:Yes, please. (Score:2)
Google's chinese censorship = shoplifting a candybar evil.
I'm not usually one to play "choose the lesser of two evils", but most times it's 9.94 to 9.93... this is more like 20 million versus 0.6.
Re:Yes, please. (Score:5, Interesting)
Google philosophy is that they can make more money, long-term, by doing no evil. I've yet to see anything from them that shows they've abandoned that philosophy.
Re:Yes, please. (Score:5, Insightful)
Anytime you buy a product that is made is China you have aided the government of China in thier domination of the Chinese people. Are you going to quit buying anything made in China? - good luck with that endeavor.
While (mostly) all of us would like to see the Chinese people free, it's not gonna happen overnight or simply by us wishing upon a star. It will either happen quickly with war (damn unpleasant affair) or much more slowly with (ever growing) free markets. Every little thing that causes the Chinese people to improve their own standard of living will pressure their government to get more of it - the Chinese government likes being in power because that is where the wealth is in that country. Create a generally higher level of wealth and the country will become a better place, because the people there are far bigger than their government.
Re:Yes, please. (Score:4, Interesting)
I've mostly been struck at how irritating their website is to use. I went through most of the hassle of registering an account, but never finished, because it was just too irritating and long. Way to much reading and clicking.
Disabling my account when I moved countries was also a huge pain in the ass. In the end I figured it was easier to just never do business with them.
In the end I decided that I didn't trust their competency enough to give them my card info. I trust Amazon, and Yahoo! Store, but that's about it.
Re:Yes, please. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Yes, please. (Score:2)
Fraud prevention. Paypal is the ultimate crime-to-cash gateway. Or at least it used to be. Those hoops you had to jump through are supposed to ward off evildoers. Still, with a little persistence, you can rip off anyone in the world and turn it into cash without ever having to sh
Re:Yes, please. (Score:2)
I will never, ever, couple my checking account to PayPal, which is what they really want you to do. Pay them with a credit card, and you have some protection. Pay them with a direct debit from your checking account, and you will have no recourse whatsoever, you might as well set fire or flush your money away...
Horizontal Expansion (Score:5, Informative)
Granted, they all center on information technology, this company is ever expanding along different product lines. We've seen Google blogs, Picasa, Analytics, Video, Desktop, Talk, Earth, Toolbar, Gmail, Translate, Mobile, etc. And (thank god), they've all been presented to us rather benignly but are they all considered successes?
And now we observe GBuy, a service to compete with Paypal. Paypal's history has been rocky but they do have a solid foothold as they are almost married with eBay. Will eBay welcome the new GBuy and favor it equally with Paypal?
Google profits around $17 billion a year--do they really need to become a money transfer service? Ebay reports [auctionbytes.com] $4.5 billion a year, will they be sharing some of that with Google? Will a cut of that even matter to Google?
What's interesting is to see if they actually take a cut (a la Paypal) or if they just continue Google ads through the pages on the service to pay for all of the legal work that comes with claims and fraud. They have the resources to do it and this would probably kill sites like Paypal that take a 3% or more charge on each transaction.
Re:Horizontal Expansion (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Horizontal Expansion (Score:5, Informative)
Don't forget that credit card companies charge businesses that take their cards. When you buy gas with your credit card, the credit cards company (mastercard, visa, whatever) charges the gas station to process the payment, sometimes as much as 5 percent. So your statement "What's interesting is to see if they actually take a cut (a la Paypal) or if they just continue Google ads through the pages on the service to pay for all of the legal work that comes with claims and fraud." Ignores the largest expense that PayPal or Potentially GBuy has....
Re:Horizontal Expansion (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Horizontal Expansion (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Horizontal Expansion (Score:2)
Potential sales. If the station doesn't have pay at the pump I will leave. I suspect others will too. They may not make much but some is better than none. And I sometimes wander in and buy something-from stations with pay at the pump.
Re:Horizontal Expansion (Score:2, Informative)
FYI, their 2004 gross profit (2005 figures having not been released yet) was $1.7bn.
It was in the article ... (Score:2)
Perhaps I misread that ... maybe $17 billion is their gross profit? Either way, I said "profit" not "gross profit" or "net profit."
Re:It was in the article ... (Score:2)
Re:Horizontal Expansion (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Horizontal Expansion (Score:2)
But of course.
Those who compete, wish to succeed.
Those who succeed, wish to dominate.
Confused (Score:3, Funny)
If I was PayPal, I wouldn't believe Google either...
Re:Confused (Score:2)
What if Google ads a "buy this" link to its advertising banners? With a cut of the transaction going to either Google itself, or to the owner of the page (for some targeted stuff) (or to both).
If they restrict the payment service to their own ad network, you can't really say they are directly competing with PayPal.
Can third party transfer survive? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't like paper cash, and I definitely don't like digital cash. The banking cartel, on the other hand, worked very hard to separate paper receipts for gold from the actual gold, and then the paper receipts became valuable. Now they've made almost 80% of currency digital already (compare M1 versus M3 money supply figures), and I'm even more hesitant to become part of that system. Paypal has embraced it entirely, but I wonder how quickly they'll be forced out of the business if they don't become part of the system.
In the end, competition is destroyed, and we the consumer will end up with pretty much what we've always had.
Re:Can third party transfer survive? (Score:2, Funny)
I don't like paper cash, and I definitely don't like digital cash.
Hey, you! Yeah, you in the droopy pants with the pockets full of dubloons!
Re:Can third party transfer survive? (Score:4, Interesting)
Money is VERY easy to understand -- it is merely a store of time. You perform some work for someone, instead of bartering for their services or products, they can give you some of their time that they have earned in the form of something valuable, divisible and easy to recognize. This has historically been gold or silver (or wheat or oxen or dirt). Gold and silver have been the best forms of money as they are near impossible to counterfeit or duplicate.
As society evolved, people wanted to be secure with their savings, so they stored it into banks of security. These banks issued receipts for the gold or silver. Banking was private, they all had their own "dollar" bills that were private -- banks competed by offering good rates for secure savings or they helped you invest your gold/silver by loaning it to others.
You could always redeem your receipts (or the receipts of others) for the physical gold/silver if you wanted. This all changed in around 1913 (and a few times before in US history) when the government said gold wasn't valuable and that paper receipts were. Of course, central banks up until the early 1970's still balanced their accounts with gold, and central banks still store gold in reserves. Crazy how the general public loves paper, but governments and central banks loves gold.
Your understanding of money is incomplete (Score:4, Interesting)
I had mod points but I'm giving them up to post a reply instead. In short, you are wrong. Money is very easy to understand, but it's not time--it is a placeholder for value. You are exchanged money for your time not because money represents time, but because money represents value, and your time has certain value. How much value your time has is the result of a human negotiation of differing opinions. Currency is simply the formalization of such negotiation.
Using a market-valued medium to exchange value (example: gold) is NOT a currency, it is simply an advanced form of barter, since the value of the exchange is limited by the market value of the medium.
Economics ultimately comes down to a human perception of value, and as such it is imaginary. Monetary value is imaginary--without human agreement it does not exist. Paper or digital money is an ideal currency for this reason, in that it does a better job of abstracting the human concept of value from the market worth of a limited-supply raw material such as gold.
Put another way, tangible materials like gold are zero-sum, while monetary value is not. If I IPO my hot new company and its stock price soars, the stock prices of other companies do not have to sink in compensation. Whereas if I want to buy a certain amount of gold, someone has to sell it to me.
To come back to your statement that money is literally time, consider the valuation of a start-up company like Google. What "time" is represented by the rapid valuation of that company? Consider the price difference between a BMW and a Hyundai...did the BMW take 3 times as long to make as the Hyundai? Consider salary differences...if money==time, why does a CEO make so much more money than you?
Every one of these questions can be understood by considering money as the placeholder for the negotiation of human opinions of value. As such it of course has implications of control, as in any negotiation one party is likely to be in a stronger position than the other, and therefore better able to bend the negotiations to their will. That's life. If you don't like people being able to control you or tell you what to do, you basically have two options--grow your strength so that YOU can exert the control, or drop out of society and live as a hermit.
Re:Your understanding of money is incomplete (Score:2)
If you're going to take that point of view, then all indirect exchange (even your beloved paper currency) is just an "advanced form of barter." The value of any good used in indirect exchange has two components, the good-value and the exchange-value. Physical goods, such as precious metals, have a nonzero g
Re:Your understanding of money is incomplete (Score:5, Interesting)
For your information, Hyundai cars are rated consistently better than BMW in reliability (http://money.cnn.com/2004/11/08/pf/autos/cr_auto_ reliability/ [cnn.com]).
Sure, BMW may save you a lot of time in getting a chick in bed, but not in time spent in shop.
Not every good is valued on equal terms. Some are valued for its utility (save time), some are valued for its rarity (supply is significantly lower than demand), and some are just valued high because they can (say, Versace bags - they certainly don't take 1000X more to produce or last 1000X longer than a normal bag, but that does not stop Versace from pricing them 1000X more than a normal bag).
Perhaps you should come down from your high-CEO horse and stop sprouting your bugus arguments on how you are so "worth it".
Re:Your understanding of money is incomplete (Score:4, Interesting)
I am very happy that your expensive mechanic is telling you that BMW costs more to fix. That's nice. And if that was true, than BMW's would not break down more often than lowly Hyundai's. But guess what? THEY DO!!!
No matter how you try to get around the issue ("BMW owners will hold their car to a higher standard than a Hyundai owner generally will" - what a freakin BS!), it still does not change the fact that BMW's break down more often.
Have you even seen the CR survey? It is pretty detailed and non-judgemental. It just asks you if you had to bring your car in for a service, what part broke down (electrical, brakes, powertrain, etc.). How BMW owners would bring their cars for service more often because "they have a higher standard" is beyond me. Especially when Hyunday has longer and more comprehensive warranty which makes it less costly for the owners of Hyundai to bring it in for service than BMW owners (who would pay a LOT more out of their pocket).
People like you just make me laugh. I am sure you are the same guy who paid $500 bucks for a wine that you won't even be able to tell in a blind taste test.
I am happy for you that you have so much money that you can waste it how ever way you want.
But you are going to have to do a lot better than just saying "BMW's are better because I say so".
So lame....
Re:Can third party transfer survive? (Score:3, Interesting)
If you go to my website I list the M3 money supply figure as reported by the Fed. This figure shows the true inflation of the dollar and is reflected in many consumer goods price increases since 1913. Yet in recent times, I do believe that the central banks have been hiding inflation by manipulating their gold reserves through leases, swaps and call options. Instead of feeling the true hit of 20% inflation, we're seeing gentle 3-5% inflation because the p
Nothing to back our own? (Score:3, Insightful)
Writes != Copies and Pastes (Score:3, Insightful)
Right. It's bad enough with submitters copy and paste from AP or Reuters reports, since that's mostly what the big news sites do anyway, but when you copy and paste someone's blog entry, we're just asking for speculative posts.
That said, I really wonder if there is much to this. With the Google-Skype deal, you'd think Google and eBay would be getting along better than to have Google launch a service directly competing with another eBay company. But then again, this is Google - how long until you can get "it" on GBay?
I _need_ an alternative to Paypal (Score:3, Insightful)
I cancelled my account with Paypal after they decided to freeze the money people were donating for hurrican Katrina on somethingawful.com.
However I still cannot pay everywhere with a creditcard and to be honest, I'd rather not use my credit card everywhere.
PLEASE come with an alternative service Google, and one that I can use with my bank in the Netherlands please, since you have worldwide offices anyway.
Thanks.
A bit out of date (Score:5, Insightful)
As for the Katrina thing, it was perfectly valid and the right thing to do. Somehtingawful was not a registered charity and thus paypal had no way to differentiate what it was doing with the hundreds of scams going on at the time to defraud people. I actually applaud them for their pro-active approach in dealing with it - they *could* have just done nothing and let the fraudsters get away with it.
Re:A bit out of date (Score:3, Insightful)
I see - so you'd like to say "thank you Paypal for not letting me decide how to spend my own money"?
Being a "registered charity" doesn't necessarily mean much charity gets done.
Re:A bit out of date (Score:2)
Re:A bit out of date (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A bit out of date (Score:3, Informative)
If paypal had really believed it was a scam they should have reported it to the police. What they did was they automatically profiled their account as fradulent, froze the account, and intentionally made it difficult to contact support.
Paypal vs Google= Users win (Score:4, Insightful)
Google (Score:5, Funny)
Yet another online credit card service? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think Google may have a point. If this is simply yet another small-volume, web-based credit card processing thing, then the quasi-online bank features of eBay still make it a unique service.
I wonder how long until Google's credit card database gets hacked the first time...you know it will be a prime target.
Re:Yet another online credit card service? (Score:2, Funny)
Paypal = Ebay (Score:2, Insightful)
The Thinning (Score:2)
Of course Google will be competing with PayPal, even if their service isn't remotely the same. Google will trust that its name and its success in the global marketplace will draw people to its pay service, draining PayPal in the process.
Will they be successful? Short-term, yes, long-term, no. It comes down to this: Google is trying to do too much. Rather than expand at a consistant rate and consolidate their power at every step, they seem to be trying to be everywhere at once. Don't let that stock price f
good positioning for google (Score:4, Interesting)
Through their search engine and paid advertising, they basically own Step 1. They act like a gatekeeper, deciding who sees what and really having a tremendous impact on the success of at least some businesses.
As for the second step of paying for an item, they don't yet have a presence, so this is the logical next step. When their system goes forward, I suspect eventually a little slice of every transaction will go into google's pocket.
Eventually people will start talking about paying a "google tax". Businesses will need to recover the expense of advertising and the expense of the transaction. Guess who they will recover it from?
Re:good positioning for google (Score:2)
And you are free to own a piece of the ... action [yahoo.com]
Re:good positioning for google (Score:2)
And that's how payment proccessors work. Whether a merchant uses GBuy, Paypal, Verisign, or deals with Visa/MC/Amex/Disover directly, they all charge money. So unless an e-tailer makes you send cash in the mail, (and then you have the "Post office tax") somebody is paying that fee somewhere.
Likewise with ad
Nothing wrong with healthy competition (Score:3, Insightful)
Hopefully Google's foray into this market will bring us some innovations like micropayments, which we've been awaiting for years -- and although we can only speculate on that, we can all be sure their involvement with payment systems will result in better products for us, whether it be from them, or competitors that are forced to enhance their services. I'm excited.
Re:Nothing wrong with healthy competition (Score:2)
So, if that is applied to an online payment system it can be nothing but a good thing.
The problem is that Google hasn't always followed that. Their new
Yet more targeting (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other side of the transaction - Google can tell what I've searched for, seen which of those searches actually turned into cash, and push yet more ads at me geared towards exactly what I pay for.
I hate the idea personally. You'd feel like you were in a shop all of the time you're looking for things on the net - a problem I already feel to some extent. I can see why both the placer of and the seller of an advert would love it however.
Cheers,
Ian
Re:Yet more targeting (Score:2)
I hate the idea personally. You'd feel like you were in a shop all of the time you're looking for things on the net - a problem I already feel to some extent.
Personally, I love the potential results of this. If I'm going to have ads on Web pages, I'd much rather that they were ads for things I might actually buy. What bothers me is the implications of such consolidated power and information gathering. I have a lot of trust in Google due to their culture and history, but I don't trust the company that
It's not evil to compete with PayPal. (Score:3, Informative)
Seems easy to implement (Score:2, Interesting)
If you comment on my English, please bear in mind how well you are doing on your third language.
Who Said Anything About a Payments Business (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Who Said Anything About a Payments Business (Score:2)
This also could be a lot of hot air. Fire and Motion [joelonsoftware.com] - it's something that GOOG does quite well, actually.
Google is making a BANK! (Score:2, Funny)
I know what's going on! Google is making a digital bank! It'll be located on the island of Kinakuta in an abandoned Japanese "command center." Quick! Find Goto Dengo!
Google Payments will make eBay more honest? (Score:2)
Is this not obvious? (Score:2)
Considering Google's business model, it seems obvious that they payment system will facilitate AdSense and AdWords payments between Google and advertisers, not person to person. Hell, I've got a liberal arts degree and even I can see that.
A good online payment system is desperately needed (Score:2, Troll)
... and PayPal certainly is not it. To begin with, such a payment system needs to work on a basis where you cannot ever have an account frozen except by court order. A payment system which gives a definitely point of guarantee is also needed, and credit cards certainly don't do that (charges can be reversed for a lengthy period of time). And such a system needs to be available to anyone who can properly identify themselves regardless of things like credit rating (i.e. don't grant credit and you won't nee
Re:A good online payment system is desperately nee (Score:2)
Easy to do if you are paying the bill for the month's rent; however, completely useless for things like e-bay - because the buyer is not protected if the item is defective, or not sent at all. You need to trust the seller for this to work.
Google and eBay relationship (Score:2)
Then there's this story, eBay owns PayPal, eBay and Google don't appear to be too friendly anymore. Complex relationship huh?
Google vs. Paypal? (Score:2)
Paypal and Ebay aren't loved in as much as they are tolerated, and many ebay hobbiests find their profits significantly eroded by what is now considered excessively high fees and poor term
Bye PayPal. (Score:2)
Obviously Micropayments (Score:4, Interesting)
Micropayments, on the other hand are really that big a technical challenge. All previous schemes have failed because of the chicken/egg problem. If they don't have enough users signed up, not content providers will signon and vice versa.
Google already has a gigantic video service which is a great initial content provider. Apart from that, hundreds of website operators will sign on immediately because they've been successful in the past.
As for users signing up, they've only got to get a few % of the millions of gmail users to type in a credit card number, or they could let the billions of "webmasters", who've got google ads on their pages but never make it to the minimum payout, spend their click-money on micropayments.
-tim