john_k - 6:10 pm on Jun 29, 2006 (gmt 0)

My first impression is "okay, the level 2 integration looks comparable to a PayPal integration."

My second impression is "holy crap - Google is REALLY amassing a huge amount of data about buyers AND sellers." I always thought the AdWords conversion tracking was too much information to share. (so I never used it) This blows that away. Now they can get a very detailed picture of sales volume down to individual line items and companion purchases. And they can match that with buyer demographics, and combine it with your competitors' data. Throw in browsing and search behavior tied to each sale. The temptation (or sound business sense) to leverage this information and push into whole new markets and/or squeeze whomever they wish out of business will be huge.

I plan to take a look at the APIs and utilize the sandbox to build a working connection. However I will wait before going live with it. Part of me hopes the whole endeavor fails. Call me paranoid, but it is just too much information for any one company to possess.