John Battelle's Searchblog

Perhaps it would be better to pay more than we have to. Maybe it would be better to pay $5 for a gallon of gas instead of the "predatory" $3.

Nah...I'll pass

Just yesterday, European increased their anti-trust fines. Well, here is a company readying itself to pay that fine.

The displaying of "cart" icon with ads and discount to solely google advertisers is exatly what is called bundling. If google cares about customer experience or care about equal footing competition then they must also show paypal icon along with the merchant ads who accepts paypal. I have paypal account and I may want to see ads from those merchants who accepts paypal and not google checkout. Similarly show mastercard, visa or whatever icon alongwith those advertisers who accept these instruments.
If these are too many icons to show then simply make the cart icon to denote that the merchant accepts certain types of electronic payments, e.g., google checkout payment and/or paypal payment and/or similar type of payments.

Otherwise this is, forcing another service (google checkout) on those users who are using their different service (google ad and search products).

Kamal

PS: The commentator is a Microsoft employee. These views are his own personal views.

Wow, that free market is a bitch, ain't she?

I suspect that the above Microsoft employee isn't an attorney....just a bitter MS employee.

It amazes me how so many people think Google is evil now, just because they are a publicly traded company. It's not like they weren't profitable before...

I like the irony of a Microsoft employee pointing out that Google are doing the very things that have landed MSFT in so much hot water in the past.

It seems like there are limited benefits to the consumer, more benefits to merchants (esp. if in fact that icon does drive higher CTRs) and wonder upon wonders most of the benefits delivered to GOOG. Unfortunately in the long run the things that GOOG gets out of this hurt the Merchants and the consumers in the long term.

Just Posted on Google Checkout at http://www.webmetricsguru.com/2006/06/google_checkout_lauched.html

I think one of the side benifits is going to be the complete metrics that Google Analytics will now be able to pull - once all this is intergrated.

I was wondering why did google limit the service to USA.

Well, 2 weeks after Google launches Checkout, my VISA is hit with thousands of dollars of unauthorized charges under the name of Google Adwords. I am not signed up for Adwords or any other Google feature. Methinks the predictions that Google can't address fraud issues are true!

Google Checkout integration is a no brainer if you're already an active AdWords advertiser.

The free transaction processing is basically free money.

The shopping cart icon that appears next to your ad makes it stand out against your competitors' ads. This is a huge benefit to small merchants, who have a hard time establishing trust with potential shoppers. This icon should increase their click through rates and "browser to buyer" conversion rate.

Just my $.02.

I checked out “Google-checkout”.
The overall process seems to be very easy but exactly that makes this solution very vulnerable. During checkout there was no security question to make sure that I’m indeed the owner of the Google account or the associated Credit Cards in that account. Of course I used my username and password but because there are so many Google sites, using the same username and password, it is very easy to loose your login information on a hijacking page as you might not check the url for Ad-Words or Gmail every time you log on as those services never had the possibility to shop with your Credit Card.
Now because you have one account and login information for all it is quite possible that hackers will try to get your login information from any Google service out there! Even worth is the fact that the hacker can change the password without any problem. The owner of the account might not even get any information about the password change as the e-mail is sent to the according and hijacked Gmail account.
Because of this HUGE security risk I would not recommend using Google checkout!
Please checkout the http://www.thebilliondollarpatent.com as s-registration solution that Google should have implemented in their service to make it solid and secure. This solution is requiring a third credential called TAN to make sure that ONLY the owner of that account is able to shop online even in case the account is hijacked.
I hope that everybody is aware of the security issue with Google checkout and will inform Google of a better solution!
Thanks and be safe;-)))!!

It amazes me how so many people think Google is evil now, just because they are a publicly traded company