Forum Moderators: goodroi
Google will start an online payment system this month that will challenge EBay Inc.'s PayPal and let Google offer more targeted ads.
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[chicagotribune.com...]
[edited by: engine at 3:04 pm (utc) on June 12, 2006]
Brett said it. If they can overcome this, though, I feel they are poised to grow GBuy into the major diversification they've needed for quite some time. Google needs to create new income streams and GBuy could be the beginning of this for them.
PayPal has its problems, but it has something that GBuy doesn't - brand recognition with the general public.
Yeah, nobody ever heard of GBuy. Unless... you don't suppose they would think of using the "Google" brand name to market this, do you?
:-)
Another "revolutionary" product? Payment processing?!
good grief, hasn't anyone yet tired of all the revolutionary products to date?
Gmail - dethroned hotmail/yahoo? lol
Talk - has anyone outside of techie land heard of this?
Froogle - the beta that won't quit or is it something else now?
Calendar - hmmm, lotsa potential for an ONLINE CALENDAR..
Finance - universally panned by anyone who's seen it.
oh, I almost forgot..
Web Accelerator
:0
just another press release by a stock market analyst, does google now farm out the marketing of product launches to wall street types? Great stuff, should keep investors interested for awhile longer.
Personally, I don't think Ebay/Paypal has much to worry about. ( though wouldn't be surprised to see GoogleAuction next ).
Before we know it, Google will start a low-cost airline (FroogleAir?) to compete with EasyJet and Southwest... why not - search doesn't seem to matter as much as it did in the past, plus they've put their hands in everything else. :)
Google often has teething problems with their new product rollouts (and do they ever make it out of beta?). Pause & ponder for a moment... Am I ready for the financial risk? Do I have a Plan B...
It's like they are throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. I used to struggle trying to figure out exactly what Google was trying to do with toys like Picassa. Innovation for innovation's sake is not healthy over the long haul. Investors will eventually take their money elsewhere.
This is it in a nutshell. On the one hand they are "experimenting" i.e. they have no real plan. On the other, it's all ran a bit like a giant PhD experiment - hey wouldn't it be great if we had <insert crackpot idea here>.
Much of what they've released in recent years is at the level of student projects, for example when they launched sitemaps they had a really handy site bot indexer all ready for you, all you had to do was install Python. I mean, the kind of audience they were after would all have a good working knowledge of Python. Wouldn't they?
One of the things they have figured out is that lazy journalists love easy articles. The minute you bring out, say, a genuinely poor piece of chat software you have an instant headline - Google challenge Microsoft and AOL's chat dominance.
They've yet to challenge anyone on anything outside of search, and nobody knows this more than Google. From a personal point of view I have yet to see a mature, well thought out piece of software or technology in recent years. Even their sitemaps, an exclusively internal piece of software, is a mess. Why would they be any better at the very well established world of finance?
As far as I'm concerned it's either desperation or marketing. Or both. Google simply aren't that good, and everyone else is beginning to catch up with search.
Somehow I just don't see these guys grasping payment processing, has there been an official announcement or is this just some stock analyst with too much sugar in his wheaties?
Will customer service be available or will they they send boiler plate emails with links to a hints page.
They have customer service?
They have customer service?
Thats proprietary information, revealing details would put their business at risk. ;)
Thats proprietary information, revealing details would put their business at risk. ;)
You mean we'll have to infer whether they care about the customers? Or, rather, read posts from ill-informed 17 year olds about the supposed rumour (found on Digg) that their Responding to Customers in a Timely Fashion and, Far from Treating them with Contempt, We'll Communicate With Them Not Using Matt Cutts Personal Blog (BETA) program is available on the Indonesia datacentre between 3pm and 4:26pm GMT? But only if you're using FireFox.
It will also be interesting to see if Ebay allows a Gbuy payment option on ebay.
So long as eBay owns it, PayPal will not be trumped for auction payments.
PayPal is likely to start revising a lot of their "you don't like it, too bad" policies though...
Not accepting gbuy and/or the next big thing is a loss for merchants. the only thing that would stop them from immediately accepting gbuy is if the API/IPN or whatever is difficult/expensive to integrate with current shopping carts and checkout systems. Given google's experience with APIs and effective integration of services with third-party apps (think google earth, maps, adwords/adsense), they should be able to fare pretty well in this department.
this is a great thing from the standpoint of those using competiting services, as we may see a price war (even a small deduction in flat fee/percentage for paypal can add up), and it may force them to change some of their rules.
PayPal has its problems, but it has something that GBuy doesn't - brand recognition with the general public.Yeah, nobody ever heard of GBuy. Unless... you don't suppose they would think of using the "Google" brand name to market this, do you?
:-)
(The "Google" brand is so strong that some folk will jump at a new product, unseen & untested.)
Think of it this way: What's PayPal? A payment processor. What's eGold? A payment processor. What's Google GBuy? I'm not sure, but I think I'll read the thread (that we're currently reading...).
Perhaps my point is better made if I refine my argument to say that PayPal has both brand recognition and product familiarity with the general public, whereas GBuy only has the Google brand to (currently), ahem, "bank" on.
And I did say...
> On the flipside, I also don't doubt that some sales will be made simply because it's Google.
;)
I'm not here to kick Google because there's a chance - I try to sit on the fence. And while there have been arguments made that early adopters probably should seriously consider, I don't think GBuy will be as shaky as other rollouts.
"Google," as a whole, has prior experience with payment processing - Adsense, for example.
A couple of rough launches previously mentioned: SiteMaps was surely born from someone's personal 20% R&D time (and they program in Python), and didn't grow much from there before being launched. The experience behind the product is (probably) limited to a small team. Analytics was an aquisition. It's not easy to buy experience (especially if coming in at the wrong time when it comes to stock options ;) ). Yes, the experience is in-house, but it's still "Urchin" experience (culture, environment, etc.), not "Google."
The whole "Google," on the other hand, has some facet of payment processing across its empire. Shoot, its empire is advertising & the associated three-party payment processing (advertiser, publisher, Google). Years of experience. GBuy is "merely" a switching of "advertiser & publisher" with "buyer & seller."
The rub is how easy & smooth can Google switch the two?
Call it GoogleMeals or whatever - I would like to eat it daily;)
Bad Advertiser!
Bad Webmaster!
Bad Publisher!
Bad Journalist!
Bad Stockholder!
forewarned is forearmed.
Bad Merchant! we keep your money, user is always right!
We consider the user our customer :)
On its core search results pages, Google will designate each merchant accepting GBuy as a "trusted GBuy merchant." If consumers view this as a mark of safety and security, Rohan believes this should increase click-through rate.
And on the other hand. Most, or at least many, of us have already given them all this info via our Adsense or Adwords accounts. So far, so good.
