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Google Wallet May Compete With Paypal
theskeptic writes "According to the WSJ, Google plans to offer an electronic-payment service that could help the Internet-search company diversify its revenue and may heighten competition with eBay's PayPal unit. Codenamed Google Wallet, a payment service could represent a significant expansion beyond online advertising, which generated 99% of its $3.2 billion in revenue last year. Google's move could potentially threaten eBay's successful PayPal service, which generated $233.1 million, or 23% of eBay's revenue in the first quarter."
www.gwallet.com is currently owned by a domain squatter.
Having used paypal and ebay when selling, I know well that the fees and such add up quickly when using these services. I didnt even use all the special junk they try to push on you like bold headings, gallery etc and I still wound up paying 11 dollars to sell a 75 dollar item...thats robbery. Hopefully this google wallet will make paypal's credit card use fees come back down to earth.
This could lay the foundation for Google to introduce paid services. It would certainly ease them into it if people already use Google Cash.
It's also nice to see some competition to Paypal. Ebay has done a pretty good job with it IMO, but too much of a monopoly for me to be comfortable with.
How about Goopay? Goopal? Paygoo? Palgoo? Paygle? Paygle?
I had an eBayer complain about a transaction and PayPal did not just set aside the amount of the sale which was small - they locked out my entire account which had a ripple affect with other auctions I was running. By the time I was exonerated I had taken a beating. I am not opposed to competition if it might reduce some of this heavy handed behavior.
http://www.busyweather.com/
With Google coming up with their own PayPal, they're halfway to coming up with a full eBay-killer auction site. Imagine being able to create an auction that'd show up whenever somebody searches Google for the product's name....
Now Google can store my e-mail, remember my searches, know who all my friends are, know where I'm driving, and know all my finances :-D
Good job!
The more you know, the less you understand.
Provided Google can somehow use their branding to reflect reliability, security, and stability -- I'd trust them with money. Feed the fear about paypal's insecurities and you've got yourself a deal.
Perhaps a business link through Froogle could prove beneficial, too. You know, "preferred customer" type scenario.
In the end, though, I really do think we should start worrying about the amount of information Google collects. Searches, identity, e-mails, and with this thing, buying trends and other financial information. Yeah, we love 'em...but their capacity for evil is growing and becoming a bit more scary.
How long until google branches out to the point where they're in direct competition with eBay. From google wallet to google auction.
You get to use google's extra-spiffy search features to find exactly what you're looking for. Plus, google would probably be able to create something 10x less cumbersome and akward than ebay's interface.
If Google's going this way, it might be just as easy to tie it into the Froogle service: let people find the item they want, then pay for it from the same interface.
In time, they could introduce their own eBay like system. Odds are, eBay won't just let Google Wallet into their system and people would have to do payments manually (they way they used to with Paypal). But if Google builds off of Froogle and inserts themselves as a middleman, it would be an effective way of getting extra revenue and balancing out their ad system.
Just a random thought - naturally, I could be wrong.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Just about everybody trusts Google.
I trust PayPal/Ebay, but less than I trust Google.
As long as Google Wallet can keep away from either a financial scandal or a security breech, they should eat Ebay's lunch -- except on Ebay.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
I *really* hope they go through with that. So far, PayPal has what is pretty much a monopoly on online payments; there's alternatives like Moneybookers, but few people even know about them, and PayPal has consistently and systematically abused its monopoly by imposing more and more unreasonable restrictions.
Two that annoy me the most, personally are the fact that you can't use it for "adult" transactions, and that it's quite limited with regard to how you can get your own money that sits in your own account in many countries outside of the USA. In fact, there is a list of countries where the only available option is transferring the money to a US-based bank account - which really is ridiculous when you think about it. It may not matter much to the average US citizen, of course, but think about it - what would you say if you found out that the online payment service you used to have people pay for the stuff you sold on eBay only allows you to transfer the money to a bank account in - say - Uruguay?
PayPal's policies are consistent with those of eBay, though (its mother company nowadays); like eBay, PayPal is entirely inconsiderate of its users, a stark contrast to Google's "do no evil" philosophy.
Let's hope that Google will revolutionize online payments the same way they revolutionized searching, and let's also hope that PayPal will soon be just as forgotten as Hotbot, Northernlight, Mamma and all the search engines we used before Google was there.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Finally!
:)
It's about damn time a company with a reputation like Google's got into this area. I hate PayPal with a passion; they wouldn't accept one of my credit cards for an online payment (there were no other choices for the site I was paying), so I contacted their support. Guess how that went? Long story short, two automated emails and one "we won't help you" email over a few weeks. They don't want to help you, they just want your money. Also check out the horror stories of frozen accounts floating around the web.
Another guide to these type of sites is how many hoops you have to jump through to actually contact them. Try it, drop by and click through. See how long it takes to contact someone.
Anyway, sub-rant over. Imagine how a company like google could shake up this area. It's about time a reputable company came in and did a good job. Maybe even micropayments or something similar in the future? I imagine online comic creators would love that one.
If you send a couple bucks via PayPal, even if the sender has a positive account balance (i.e. no CC transaction costs exist), the fees are quite hefty, percentage wise. (The minimum transaction fee is USD 0.3).
It would be really nice to get a break on small transactions, especially ones that don't incur CC costs.
> A lot of you won't like to hear it... But isn't google trying to get a monopoly on everything that is on our planet?
They may turn out to be the Microsoft of the internet era. However, so far they haven't shown signs of being a great evil, and their stuff isn't crap.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I agree with you, I look forward to a viable alternative to paypal. I am not please with Paypal after having had a false charge back happen against me, and being pinged for an aditional $10.00 as well as losing the original money. Paypal sucks has more horror stories too, and I offer some advice if you have to do business with paypal:
Since google seems to be holding to its 'do not evil' policy they should make a for good competitor with customers fed up with paypal. I wouldn't mind seeing a google auction site to compete with ebay (Paypal's owner) as well :).
Getting into payment systems will expose Google to new levels of regulation that may affect user's privacy. Regulations related money laundering and anti-terrorist laws may force Google to collect and turn-over data on users of its payment service. I wonder if those rules might also force Google to turn-over other data on "customers of interest".
Having all your information (your banking, your email, your internet search activities) in one basket makes it a tempting target for government.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Google wants my wallet! The next thing they want will be my first born. Sheesh... I thought Microsft was bad; they only wanted my soul.
Id say one of the significant reasons for Google doing this is for payments to and from adsense publishers and adwords advertisers.
Currently they just send cheques in the post every month to publishers, which is crazy for overseas publishers and must increase their costs a fair bit. They don't use services such as Paypal due to the fees.
It would also help in obtaining money from advertisers for adwords.
Google deals with a lot of (sometimes small individual units of) money from publishers and advertisers, and their current system would be far better off if it were handled online through themselves.
I.O.U One Sig.
Google basically made it's own micropayment transaction system internally to handle the accounting of google adwords and adsense revenue changing hands in millions of transactions every day.
They just needed to take the next logical step with it.
e.
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From http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/:
"Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."
I'm not necessarily opposed to Google creating this service, but how do they make it fit with their mission statement, assuming the information their talking about making universally accessible isn't your credit card info.
Of course it depends on how long they have owned it, and what they have been doing with it, but I wouldn't mind Google telling them to fork it over for small but reasonable price. Domain squaters are no better than the lowest type of Spsmmer, they are just the lowest forms of life.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Who decides if Google is an advertising company or a search company? *What* decides it? Revenue or what most people use their services for? Don't Google still do good in helping people find what they're looking for above being ad-toting corporate concentrated evil?
'Selling me to companies' is ridiculous - Google has been one of the biggest players in the market of bringing ad spots to ordinary people. Anyone can buy AdWords for a paltry sum, and all they use is keywords - from your search or from the web page you're visiting. I don't see where this tips over from handy way to finance the other aspects of one's company to evil big brother attitude.
Is it the cookies? Block the cookies. Is it the ads? Block the ads. The 427 text ads crack is blown up for a quick laugh - I've never seen any Gmail page show me more than four *text-based* ads and Google have been consistently good at not getting ads get in the way of or distract from the actual content - with the only possible exceptions being the blue boxed "sponsored links" at the top of some search results. I find the ads on Slashdot, for example, to be more annoying and more in-my-face.
Speaking of Gmail, I'm okay with their computers scanning my correspondence for keywords. That's what they do - scan emails for keywords. Nothing else. The Google servers aren't secretly reading my emails, and if I would ever click those ads then it would at least be ads related to what I'm reading about or writing about at the time and thusly be much less annoying. I appreciate that.
(To knee-jerkers: Go ahead and call me a Google apologist or a Google fanboy or what have you if you want to. But refute my facts, refute my point of view, challenge my opinions and *back it all up* before you even think about sticking a label on me. Wouldn't you be mad if I blew you off as a "conspiracy theorist" or "corporate-hating hippie" and left it at that?)
Getting thrown on a bonfire by psychotic fundamentalists is not what I would call a good return.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
If Google wanted to kill ebay and paypal in one quick swoop, just offer lower pricing on auctions, and be realisitic. Extra features are nice, but eBay just kills the entire idea of the upsell, every stupid thing you do costs an added fee, until your 99 cent item costs $12.00 to list! Would I put a ton of stuff on auction if it was cost friendly? You bet -- and might end up paying more **IN THE LONG RUN** then paying ludicrous amounts now and waiting 6 months between transactions.
Secondly, dont kill sellers and buyers with fees on both ends of the transaction, maybe link both services together, with free transaction and merchant processing for auctions when you utilize GWallet on your auction - BOOM - right there, youve got them hooked, and you dont need to worry about alot of fraud auctions.
Google in their infinite wisdom I'm sure has already come up with a great idea, and I cannot wait to see it. I am so sick of EBay, and when I log in there - I just feel dirty all over again from the way they rape you with charges that you end up owing money once its all done. Sheech.
Once you have a premier account (which is required to accept credit card payments AT ALL or other payments over some small limit -- $100 per month, I think) you get charged fees for all payments you receive. Even ones that don't cost paypal a thing, like a transfer from someone's paypal balance.