Google CEO Confirms Online Payment System

didde writes "Reuters is reporting on statements that Google's CEO Eric Schmidt had made regarding Google's upcoming payment system. Apparently they're not looking to compete with PayPal." From the article: "Schmidt said Google does not intend to offer a 'person-to-person stored-value payments system' like PayPal's, in which money briefly resides in PayPal's control during the transaction, but he did not give details of how the Google system would differ."

Comments

Will they play like a bank

[Anonymous Coward]

and assume resonsibility for financial mistakes, i believe this is where Paypal are the scam, look like a bank but un-regulated and assume nothing

That's a coincidence...

[gowen]

Because I'm starting an international chain of fast food hamburger restaurants, but I'm not looking to compete with McDonalds and Burger King.

I wonder ...

[spellraiser]

Perhaps the system will differ in that the money will reside permanently in Google's control ...

That's how I would design a system like this - and then 'disappear' to a tropical island.

Oops ... I said to much, didn't I?

*Disappears to a tropical island*

Re:I wonder ...

[Mr Guy]

If you believe the paypal sucks people, that essentially IS PayPal's system.

Currency

[Decameron81]

Maybe they are going to offer Googlecoins as the first form of virtual currency?

Please compete with paypal.

[BillGodfrey]

Paypal need a competitor.

How does this work?

[crlove]

I guess I don't understand how they can do this without the money at SOME point being in their control.

I mean, what else are we looking at?

"With GooglePay you write a check directly to the person you're paying, then write another check for 3% of that amount to Google. Easy!"

Micropayments

[QMO]

I wish we had a few more details.

On the surface it sounds a little like something that could evolve into the micropayment structure that could end spam.

My guess/hope

[metamatic]

I'm guessing and hoping that Google is going to introduce the first viable micropayment system on the web. If anyone can do it, they can.

Bank search

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, what I always wanted, a way for everyone to search for my financial transactions.

Beta?

[Moiche]

They may have to skip the beta this time. I don't think I'd trust a pre-release version of the software to transfer money.

me: I transferred 100$ for his pog collection. Where did it go?

google support: But it's beta! And Beta means we can fuck up from time to time!

Also -- not competing with Paypal because they aren't going to store money? Sure, but won't google add that functionality the moment it becomes commercially advantageous? Not to mention the fact that I think for most people, an instanteous credit to your credit card (or bank account or whatever) when you get paid for you antique pog collection is not such a bad thing.

Final thought -- for every post in this thread complaining about the number of Google stories on /. -- God kills a kitten. What -- prove me wrong.

--Moiche

Re:Google

[mister_llah]

There is more than a fair share of people who just don't like PayPal... and there is a lot of brand strength in 'Google'...

To quote nuke satellite monitors, "Confidence is high! Repeat! Confidence is high!" ... (relating to Google) ...

===

Will it kill PayPal? No. Will it bite them a bit? To be sure. No matter what Google will use, as long as it offers a secure means for an online transaction, it will hurt PayPal... but they'll survive...

Refreshing Change

[alvinrod]

From Article:

Schmidt said Google does not intend to offer a "person-to-person stored-value payments system" like PayPal's, in which money briefly resides in PayPal's control during the transaction, but he did not give details of how the Google system would differ.

Even though companies are out to make money and occasionally have to step on the toes of another company if they want to turn a profit, it's nice to see that not all computer business is so cut-throught. Maybe Google has realized that a little healthy competition is good, but more than likely they have slightly different aims or are trying to tie it in more with the rest of their services in a way that paypals method doesn't work.

Companies need to realize that crushing the competition and taking control of the market isn't going to be healthy for the consumer. Look at some of Microsoft's (Not to pick on them, but they're an obvious example) products like Internet Explorer. For a while it was the best browser around to many people, but after it gained control , Microsoft stopped upgrading it and fixing it, making it a rather sub-par product today.

To those of you who say that Google or any other company wouldn't fall into the same trap if they gained market dominance is plain ignorance. Go ahead and root for Google, Apple, Sun, AMD, or any other underdog company, but just remeber that they're as capable as being as evil and ruthless as some people feel that Microsoft, Sony, Intel and other industry leaders are today.

Its coupons silly

[cmdr_beeftaco]

To quote the article "The payment services we are working on are a natural evolution of Google's existing online products and advertising programs, which today connect millions of consumers and advertisers"
So an advertiser can give you 5 bucks off if you buy from them. Or maybe reward points to use in the network.

Perspective

[deutschemonte]

I think it is important to put this in the "Google Mindset" if you will: Everything Google does is related to search.

They made GMail to allow you to store all your messages you ever send/receive and then give you a powerful tool to search through them.

Google Maps is just a nice compliment/interface to Google Local.

And the list goes on. So what can Google do to bring the power of search to a payments system?

Re:Perspective

[BewireNomali]

interesting point. very.

the search correlation is that they can now separate the link-clickers from the product buyers. Further, they can gauge your spending habits and further target ads to maximize effectiveness. Your mom's birthday is in august, let's say, and you always buy something online around that time to get over to her. They can target mom-like gifts around that time, increasing the liklihood of the purchase, and they get cash off the transaction, the clickthrough, and the sale. I think anyway.

Then they start creating a database of faithful online shoppers and start charging premium prices to advertise to that crowd.

You're totally right. It all has to do with the information. The don't actually handle money, they assume none of the liability, and they don't have to expand into a core business that is not an intrinsic strength.

Shit, man.

Global coverage?

[kkumer]

Well, one improvement over PayPal would be global coverage. Just few days ago I was very impressed by a nice piece of software (mp3splt, BTW), and I decided to donate some money to the corresponding Sourceforge project via PayPal. Half way through I found out that my small European country (Croatia), was not covered by PayPal services.

Another speculation?

[coolsva]

Rather than being a pure paypal replacement, why can we assume google is going towards micro payments. Follow me here, google searches open web pages, but also some closed databases (AP,NYT etc). You get a snippet of the result, to read the complete document, you click the link, google deducts $0.02 from your 'wallet' and shows you the page. Google pays WSJ $0.018 and pockets the rest.

At the end of the day, you are happy because you got to read the article for $0.02, WSJ is happy because they didnt have to bother about managing subscription (which you were unwilling I assume) and still got the $0.018 and google of course, got the $0.002. Everyone comes home ahead. Many have tried micropayments, but if there is anyone who can do it, it is google

What you meant to say was

[mapmaker]

We need a Paypal competitor. Paypal needs a competitor like it needs a hole in the head.

Banks need to wake up.

[el_womble]

This is damning to the banking industry. The age where they can get away with bank charges should be dead and burried. The idea that there are 10s of clerks monitoring each transaction, and therefore incurring a service fee is archaic and false. We are now paying to maintain a computer system, which if it was commisioned properly should have its costs covered by the interest they gain from investments they make with the money the hold for their clients.

In the UK at least, consumers are free to transfer money between accounts for free. But it takes between 3 and 5 days so they can gain interest (what were they doing the previous x days when it was in my account?). Businesses are routinely charged £0.20 a transaction and the transfers still take 3 to 5 days!!! How is this fair?

Banks have enough ways to generate money without charging buisnesses for micropayments.

How is that any different?

[Otto]

Converting real cash into fake cash gives the fake cash a real value and thus makes it into real cash.

In other words, if I buy a Gbuck and send it to a friend and they convert it back to whatever it is worth in cash, how is this any different than what paypal does, realistically?

If they create their own currency and decide not to tie it in a fixed way to another currency, then that's interesting, but doesn't change the fact that it's still them accepting one currency for a temporary period of time.

It also introduces the problem of fluctations of the new currency. People buy Gbucks, wait for them to be worth more real bucks, then cash out. Google is now out a ton of real cash. This is done with real cash all the time, but making it easy to convert between currencies will make this simpler. Only way to combat this that I can see is for google to implement a conversion fee to stabilize the fluctuations, which will discourage the currency from taking off in the first place.