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PayPal vs Google (Buy)
pc-facile.com writes "While Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt confirmed in press accounts that the company was building a payment service, Mr. Schmidt also denied it would directly compete with PayPal. Mr. Schmidt said Google didn't intend to offer a "person-to-person, stored-value payments system," which many people consider a description of PayPal's service. Mr. Jordan (PayPal chief) says he and his team immediately "dissected the wording" of Google's statements. He says he doesn't believe Mr. Schmidt..." There's also a more in depth WSJ article about the service.
How can Google create an online payment system without competing with PayPal? Google doesn't want to piss off eBay, because eBay is one of Google's largest advertisers -- so I completely understand why Google would say that they won't compete directly against PayPal -- I get it. Never bite the hand that feeds. (great NiN tune!)
But what I don't understand is the resulting system... what could it possibly consist of if it can't compete against PayPal? Perhaps they will use PayPal's services within the scope of the new system and defer customers to PayPal for the actual transactions? Partnerships happen when companies fear retaliation or when companies see greater profits by working together, and I think it's possible that is what's going on, in this case. Either that or we'll be seeing a very crippled new system from Google.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
PayPal is top on my list of evil Internet companies. Maybe it's top on Google's as well.
Since it's IPO on April 30th 2004, Google seems to be testing the waters of a lot of different markets.
Granted, they all center on information technology, this company is ever expanding along different product lines. We've seen Google blogs, Picasa, Analytics, Video, Desktop, Talk, Earth, Toolbar, Gmail, Translate, Mobile, etc. And (thank god), they've all been presented to us rather benignly but are they all considered successes?
And now we observe GBuy, a service to compete with Paypal. Paypal's history has been rocky but they do have a solid foothold as they are almost married with eBay. Will eBay welcome the new GBuy and favor it equally with Paypal?
Google profits around $17 billion a year--do they really need to become a money transfer service? Ebay reports $4.5 billion a year, will they be sharing some of that with Google? Will a cut of that even matter to Google?
What's interesting is to see if they actually take a cut (a la Paypal) or if they just continue Google ads through the pages on the service to pay for all of the legal work that comes with claims and fraud. They have the resources to do it and this would probably kill sites like Paypal that take a 3% or more charge on each transaction.
My work here is dung.
Hi, I'm going to create a service similar to yours in the same industry, but I'm not going to directly compete with you.
If I was PayPal, I wouldn't believe Google either...
Mr. Universe: "They can't stop the signal, Mal. They can never stop the signal."
As the banking cartel finds new ways of transfering money "instantly" I wonder if Paypal (and Google Buy) will be able to last without actually becoming licensed and regulated banks themselves. The banking industry has the most collusion (and conspiracy theories) of any industry you'll ever research, and I don't see them just giving up the control of the currency base. Paypal appeared out of the blue (in a bank's reference time) with their services, and it wouldn't surprise me if the banking cartel creates a new standard for money transfers that puts up huge roadblocks for Paypal in the name of "fighting terrorism and money laundering."
I don't like paper cash, and I definitely don't like digital cash. The banking cartel, on the other hand, worked very hard to separate paper receipts for gold from the actual gold, and then the paper receipts became valuable. Now they've made almost 80% of currency digital already (compare M1 versus M3 money supply figures), and I'm even more hesitant to become part of that system. Paypal has embraced it entirely, but I wonder how quickly they'll be forced out of the business if they don't become part of the system.
In the end, competition is destroyed, and we the consumer will end up with pretty much what we've always had.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=146731&thresho ld=1&commentsort=0&tid=217&mode=thread&cid=1229147 1
pc-facile.com writes
Right. It's bad enough with submitters copy and paste from AP or Reuters reports, since that's mostly what the big news sites do anyway, but when you copy and paste someone's blog entry, we're just asking for speculative posts.
That said, I really wonder if there is much to this. With the Google-Skype deal, you'd think Google and eBay would be getting along better than to have Google launch a service directly competing with another eBay company. But then again, this is Google - how long until you can get "it" on GBay?
Look, after the various horrendous stories about Paypal (http://www.paypalsucks.com/) could we FINALLY get a worldwide viable alternative to Paypal?
I cancelled my account with Paypal after they decided to freeze the money people were donating for hurrican Katrina on somethingawful.com.
However I still cannot pay everywhere with a creditcard and to be honest, I'd rather not use my credit card everywhere.
PLEASE come with an alternative service Google, and one that I can use with my bank in the Netherlands please, since you have worldwide offices anyway.
Thanks.
Good news for the Internet services users. The more companies competing in the same area, the best prices for the users.
Web Design Marbella Paginas Web
Google has their hands in everything. If they develop a news site geared towards nerds, it's over.
I think Google may have a point. If this is simply yet another small-volume, web-based credit card processing thing, then the quasi-online bank features of eBay still make it a unique service.
I wonder how long until Google's credit card database gets hacked the first time...you know it will be a prime target.
Unless Google can compete with eBay, it is going to massively lag behind PayPal, on account on PayPal's inertia from Ebay business and current use (eBay Paypal ties). The sites that Google links to typically accept Credit Card payments. PayPal, of course, allows such, but is necessary specifically for normal everyday people to accept credit cards (the eBay process). How does Google fit into this?
Of course Google will be competing with PayPal, even if their service isn't remotely the same. Google will trust that its name and its success in the global marketplace will draw people to its pay service, draining PayPal in the process.
Will they be successful? Short-term, yes, long-term, no. It comes down to this: Google is trying to do too much. Rather than expand at a consistant rate and consolidate their power at every step, they seem to be trying to be everywhere at once. Don't let that stock price fool you; it can fall (and did last week!) as easily as it can go up, and with it, the fortunes of the company.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Anyone remember millicents from digital altavista?
.. both for the content provider and the payer (that is no "are you sure? popop" or lame screen click thrus). It should be as simple as clicking a small red icon to turn it green causing to pay one cent. Maybe you get to use a few refund opportunities a month for misclicks. AJAX can come in here .. the content can appear instantly as u click the icon. It can look cool where encrypted/garbled text and/or images suddenly flips into understandable english.
Actually, anyone remember alatavista?
Wonder if it's similar. They'd have to make it mad easier to use
Google has done a great job positioning themselves between consumers and basically anything they want to purchase. If you think about what a consumer needs to do when they make a purchase, two key steps are first to find something you want and then secondly to pay for it.
Through their search engine and paid advertising, they basically own Step 1. They act like a gatekeeper, deciding who sees what and really having a tremendous impact on the success of at least some businesses.
As for the second step of paying for an item, they don't yet have a presence, so this is the logical next step. When their system goes forward, I suspect eventually a little slice of every transaction will go into google's pocket.
Eventually people will start talking about paying a "google tax". Businesses will need to recover the expense of advertising and the expense of the transaction. Guess who they will recover it from?
FREE - Java, J2EE and Ajax Audiobooks for Software Developers - www.DeveloperAdvantage.com
Google is providing good services in most of the areas they've ventured into, PayPal has a rocky history, and most PayPal users have at some point been frustrated by their service. However due to the nature of financial transactions they require a lot of security, and security and service don't always mix well -- at the very least we can say it takes skill to combine the two well. Maybe it's not PayPal's fault that we've been frustrated?
Hopefully Google's foray into this market will bring us some innovations like micropayments, which we've been awaiting for years -- and although we can only speculate on that, we can all be sure their involvement with payment systems will result in better products for us, whether it be from them, or competitors that are forced to enhance their services. I'm excited.
On the other side of the transaction - Google can tell what I've searched for, seen which of those searches actually turned into cash, and push yet more ads at me geared towards exactly what I pay for.
I hate the idea personally. You'd feel like you were in a shop all of the time you're looking for things on the net - a problem I already feel to some extent. I can see why both the placer of and the seller of an advert would love it however.
Cheers,
Ian
It might be foolish because of their relationship with eBay, but it's not evil. Of all the the things that Google's done lately that some might consider questionable, this isn't one of them.
Most of those stories come before eBay bought Paypal. I use paypal extensively, and also did before the buyout, and I find eBay really cleaned up their act.
As for the Katrina thing, it was perfectly valid and the right thing to do. Somehtingawful was not a registered charity and thus paypal had no way to differentiate what it was doing with the hundreds of scams going on at the time to defraud people. I actually applaud them for their pro-active approach in dealing with it - they *could* have just done nothing and let the fraudsters get away with it.
Pay-pal monetary holds based on some 14-year-old child's mommy-backed but invalid complaints got a LITTLE STALE after a while. eBay is full of scammers and low-buck douchebags trying to squeeze you for a nickle...and not much product I actually want.
In my mind, if you won't pay the merchant fees on the Credit Cards, you are too shady and you wouldn't get my money anyway.
Blar.
I receive money from Google for my google adds. They've already have the sofware to transfer money from advertiser A to my account. I shouldn't be that complicated to instruct google to substract x amount from that figure and add it to the payment of Alice. Or to substract y ammount from Bob and add it to my payment.
If you comment on my English, please bear in mind how well you are doing on your third language.
My work here is dung.
Wasn't the original goal of a Google payment system to help ease the workload for cutting and mailing xx,xxx,xxx ad publishers a check each month?
"He says he doesn't believe Mr. Schmidt..."
Denial is the first step to inner peace.
At least you seem lucky enough to be able to get PayPal in your country. Last year my country (Malta) was enabled for PayPal, but ONLY for sending money, and not receiving. If you take a look at their country list, it's a small percentage of the total countries of the world, though obviously it DOES hit most of the online community. Yet, not all...
:)
A good number of people who, like me, have long been hoping for a popular alternative to PayPal, must be wathering in the mouth in anticipation. Google, please save us, PayPal doesn't like our country!
Also, you do not need to get a paypal account to pay for an item over paypal using a regular old credit card -- and then only the credit card TOS is relevant to you. So he didn't lose a sale because he has a paypal account, he lost a sale because of your ideology.
And really, boycotts rarely affect anyone but the boycotters.
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
Is it possible Eric Schmidt is telling the truth? Maybe they are actually going to only be in the business of securley storing and transmitting credit card info. Maybe going as far as being in the gateway business. Being a merchant of record as is Paypal is a huge step and is most unpleasant. Do they really want to be in the business of chasing down fraudsters and dealing with angry customers over chargebacks? Becoming a bank simply does not fit the mission statement in my view.
It's a perfectly cromulent word.
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
I know what's going on! Google is making a digital bank! It'll be located on the island of Kinakuta in an abandoned Japanese "command center." Quick! Find Goto Dengo!
Money is VERY easy to understand -- it is merely a store of time.
I had mod points but I'm giving them up to post a reply instead. In short, you are wrong. Money is very easy to understand, but it's not time--it is a placeholder for value. You are exchanged money for your time not because money represents time, but because money represents value, and your time has certain value. How much value your time has is the result of a human negotiation of differing opinions. Currency is simply the formalization of such negotiation.
Using a market-valued medium to exchange value (example: gold) is NOT a currency, it is simply an advanced form of barter, since the value of the exchange is limited by the market value of the medium.
Economics ultimately comes down to a human perception of value, and as such it is imaginary. Monetary value is imaginary--without human agreement it does not exist. Paper or digital money is an ideal currency for this reason, in that it does a better job of abstracting the human concept of value from the market worth of a limited-supply raw material such as gold.
Put another way, tangible materials like gold are zero-sum, while monetary value is not. If I IPO my hot new company and its stock price soars, the stock prices of other companies do not have to sink in compensation. Whereas if I want to buy a certain amount of gold, someone has to sell it to me.
To come back to your statement that money is literally time, consider the valuation of a start-up company like Google. What "time" is represented by the rapid valuation of that company? Consider the price difference between a BMW and a Hyundai...did the BMW take 3 times as long to make as the Hyundai? Consider salary differences...if money==time, why does a CEO make so much more money than you?
Every one of these questions can be understood by considering money as the placeholder for the negotiation of human opinions of value. As such it of course has implications of control, as in any negotiation one party is likely to be in a stronger position than the other, and therefore better able to bend the negotiations to their will. That's life. If you don't like people being able to control you or tell you what to do, you basically have two options--grow your strength so that YOU can exert the control, or drop out of society and live as a hermit.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Would pressure on Paypal lead eBay to do more with Paypal to prevent auction fraud?
Someone is way ahead of you!
To quote a collective of bright minds of our era:
Never trust a big butt and a smile, that girl(Google) is poison -Bel Biv Devoe
He says he doesn't believe Mr. Schmidt.
Considering Google's business model, it seems obvious that they payment system will facilitate AdSense and AdWords payments between Google and advertisers, not person to person. Hell, I've got a liberal arts degree and even I can see that.
if(!toilet_paper) roll.replace(new roll);
The obvious: Google will develop its own auction site, and combine it with its own payment service, and spin it off into a wholly owned subsidiary which eventually eats eBay and PayPal through a hostile takeover...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I've been thinking for a long time now that we need to have a payment system that could be viable for open source development making it profitable. Now I know many will argue that it's kinda going against the open source way or what not, but here it is. What I was thinking is that we could have something like "The Open Source Treasury". Now what would happen is that every project has bugs, and feature requests. Now wether or not something gets fixed and how fast it gets fixed is based more or less on the motivation of the developer.
:D,
Now i noticed on most websites you can donate money to the open source project but the user doesn't really get all that much in return, if anything at all. Sometimes there is this membership thing where you get a few more forum features or what not. However you have NO idea what is happening with the money you donated.
So my idea was that you can donate money as a member of the site, the site can then deposit the money to a project portion of the treasury, and get project points in return(have a limited number of points per project that way it's more international, and easier to make software to handle integers,(simpler meaning hopefully more easily secure)anywaays) so what happens then is that the member has these points with which they can do what ever they want.
They can go on bugzilla or some derivative and instead of just adding themselves to a vote to get something done or what not, they can give these points to them. Now i know adding money into the equation makes people "evil" but if people are willing to pay why not let the developers get something in return other than putting something on their resumee. <\br>
Now so when there is a solution to a bug(how this is identified is up to the project, obviously leader bias etc should be taken out of the equation. So things like sympathy points aren't given away to poor developers, worsening the quality of the software. by implementing bad code so you can pay a poor guy.) the developer can cash in their points.
or not! because the beutiful thing is that you can make it like the stock market, if we have a limited number of points and you purchase them, you can have fluctuating prices, so it will give people even more incentive to donate to the project(btw project will get processing fees and conversion things, to garuntee a steady flow of income or what not.)
Oh and i dono if i mentioned but basically you can also do things like give your points to project leader or w/e if you don't want to distribute them yourself.
Now obviously the particulars are all up for consideration. I'm not an economy major (yet), so I don't really know what the best way to go about it would be.
Anyways,
Happy Hacking
"The Singularity is Near"
All perceptions of value are ultimately backed up by violence. Even gold has no value to you if you cannot keep others from taking it. Saying that there is nothing backing U.S. currency strikes me as very naive.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
... and PayPal certainly is not it. To begin with, such a payment system needs to work on a basis where you cannot ever have an account frozen except by court order. A payment system which gives a definitely point of guarantee is also needed, and credit cards certainly don't do that (charges can be reversed for a lengthy period of time). And such a system needs to be available to anyone who can properly identify themselves regardless of things like credit rating (i.e. don't grant credit and you won't need to check creditworthiness).
One possible system could work like this. You have a bank account with a bank that participates. You visit any web site offering to sell you something over this system and select your purchase. When the purchase reaches payment stage in checkout, you get a special code string from the seller that exactly identifies this one transaction, including final price. You take that code string (perhaps with the help of an added feature in the browser to avoid cut/paste operations) to your bank web site. You authenticate yourself to your bank to login, and provide this code string to make the payment. The bank does checks like having you verify the price. If you finalize the payment, it sends that information to a central clearinghouse and gives you back a new code string identifying the payment completion. This code string is passed back to the seller web site, who uses gives it to his bank to pick up the payment at the same central clearinghouse. At this point, it's now an irreversible cash payment.
While this system does not have the advantage of being able to reverse the payment as you might do with a credit card, it does have the advantage that the seller you sent payment to will not have any information about you, your bank account, or even which bank your account is with. They cannot double charge you. They cannot come back some other day and apply new charges. They cannot drain your bank account. All they got with their own bank verifying with the clearinghouse that someone paid the pending transaction, and the requested money really is in their account (and not in yours any longer).
The level of security you get with this system depends on your own bank. Just how much your bank demands of you to prove you have the authority to make payments from your account depends on how secure your bank wants to be ... and which bank you chose based on their security reputation. Unlike a credit card where your security depends on the seller's honesty and security vigilance, where you could lose money because of someone you didn't establish a security relationship with, this system would make your bank the focus of all your financial security (or banks if you choose to spread out in more than one). Thus you control the level of security you want by which bank you choose to do business with.
Most individuals would interface with their bank through a web interface accessed manually. You can be a seller and receive payments in low volume that way, too, if you want. Merchants would establish an automated arrangement with their bank (from among those that offer such) so they can generate transaction payment requests and verify payment completion messages quickly, rather than wait for some human to get around to doing it.
If you want to actually make payment under terms of credit, instead of using your own cash, then that's up to your bank to offer you the credit if they choose to do so. The seller won't know if the payment was based on a credit offering or not as that is just between you and your bank.
Of course, there will continue to be phishing scams to try to access your bank account so they can run some irreversible payments through to themselves from your money. But it is up to you and your bank to establish a level of security to prevent that. That could mean one of those smart cards that generates a password that changes every 30 seconds. Again, the level of security is something you choose
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
and just perhaps, the relevant bit is "payments from user to user"
if they have been trial running it with merchants who sell stuff, perhaps they will only take payments from people and to businesses, not multiple individual to individual payments.
or something akin to microsofts original idea for 'microsoft wallet' where google keeps your cc info private to them, and authorizes payments to individual merchants in aggregate..
or micropayments tracked by google, billed to you every X days, (or paid in advance) in lump sum amounts that then make the cc discounts surviveable to the merchant charging (google finance)
there are more niche needs for financial transactions, than just paying for ebay items.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
On the front page of Slashdot today: "Google and Skype in Startup to Link Hotspots" eBay owns Skype and eBay and Google appear to be friendly
Then there's this story, eBay owns PayPal, eBay and Google don't appear to be too friendly anymore. Complex relationship huh?
Yo momma hate me.
Paypal and Ebay aren't loved in as much as they are tolerated, and many ebay hobbiests find their profits significantly eroded by what is now considered excessively high fees and poor terms and conditions that leave you at the mercy of scammers. Oh sure they both tout protections for both merchant and buyer, but when you get to the fine lines, you usually find yourself fooked.
So no, Google doesn't want it's business model to be a facilitator to scammers like PayPal is, and like Ebay seems to tolerate.
Look for Google to think more out of the box and more innovative.
From TFA: GBuy will feature an icon posted alongside the paid-search ads of merchants
People who buy ads on Google will definitely pay a little extra for the GBuy service, so that people feel more confident about clicking their ads.
Well, that's simply a bank payment (from what you write, I see no difference at all), already accessible from any bank's web-service - you get the seller's info, and make a payment.
Easy to do if you are paying the bill for the month's rent; however, completely useless for things like e-bay - because the buyer is not protected if the item is defective, or not sent at all. You need to trust the seller for this to work.
I can't wait until Google eats what's left of your market share. You deserve to lose out -- not just to Google, but any company with enough wit to understand that you can't do these kinds of things with real money and get away with them.
So will Yahoo and AOL accept Google micropayments, when people sending 100+ emails have to pay to ensure proper delivery?
Paypal really does need some competition - it's charges are horrendously over the top and it's customer service has been, in my experience, non-existent and as much as google scares me some good competition against Paypal can only be a good thing
They'll do everything possible to react to this threat....
Except treat their customers better. They are the perfect example of how a monopoly treats their customers like sh*t.
FTFA: "GBuy will also let consumers store their credit-card information on Google."
What could possibly go wrong?
Its a subliminal way of increasing their shareprice.
While it is understood that eBay and Google are quite friendly to each other, and surely wouldn't want to piss each other off, I fail to see what is so wrong about Google starting their own payment system. Patent schmatent, Paypal is the biggest and longest-standing payment agent today, but that doesn't mean they can prevent new players from joining the game. If I were to open The First Bank of Billco, would I get sued by CapitalOne, MBNA et al ? Hell no.
There's a difference between plagiarism and just good ol' competition. Paypal's service is not a work of art or technical breakthrough.. their code may well be, but not their implementation and interface. If Google thinks they can do it better, then go for it!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Google needs to perfect thier other tech before...jumping into this or you will have a google video of online payments...still if you guys are more that willing to use something because it says google on it(Gmail) be my guest...
eBay could crack down on the BS, but that's half the auctions. eBay doesn't give a shit about you, which is why they allow they huge grey area called "as-is". Or are you one of those who buy insurance on these likely-worthless items and then claim the full value from the shipping company?
Blar.
I would be really suprised if Google's entry into the payment market wouldn't have to do with micropayments. Why dabble with peer-to-peer aka paypal payments? That market is already cornered.
Micropayments, on the other hand are really that big a technical challenge. All previous schemes have failed because of the chicken/egg problem. If they don't have enough users signed up, not content providers will signon and vice versa.
Google already has a gigantic video service which is a great initial content provider. Apart from that, hundreds of website operators will sign on immediately because they've been successful in the past.
As for users signing up, they've only got to get a few % of the millions of gmail users to type in a credit card number, or they could let the billions of "webmasters", who've got google ads on their pages but never make it to the minimum payout, spend their click-money on micropayments.
-tim
If google do come up with a payment service to handle micropayments,
it will probably be similar to what current adsense users are used to,
ie u dont get a cheque untill u make over 100dollars
..and now they're skimming another 0.25% off the returns from the money market feature on accounts. maybe that's not huge but still...
anyone ever had to try to call someone at paypal? some of the worst wait times and customer service I've ever seen; shockingly bad.
of course, the buyer protection stuff is nice tho
As long as PayPal continues to REQUIRE your bank clearing numbers they will be EVIL.
Check the TOS. PayPal limits the amount you can buy on a regular account. Regardless of how you fund your account, i.e. bank card, credit card, checking account, etc., once the limit is hit your account is finished. That is unless you upgrade your account and give them your bank clearing numbers, a.k.a. unfettered access to your checking account any time the want.
This is the true horror story. PayPal is a SELLERS service. The say so themself. They try to insure that a buyer cannot bail on a sale. If they have your clearing numbers thay can enforce the transaction without recourse. It's like a wire transfer, one way and unreversable. So you cannot cry to the bank because they cannot get the money back. You have to get PayPal to send it back.
There is no reason why PayPal should need my clearing numbers for any reason other than they want access to my money in the event of a dispute with a seller. As long as I use my credit card for purchases I am covered for fradulent sales. The seller is never covered except by PayPal, if the have your clearing numbers.
These are the facts. It's all on PayPal's website it's just buried in the TOS. If you have not ran afoul of PayPal then you are one of the lucky ones but remember this. If they have your clearing numbers and for any reason they are stolen then you are royally screwed because with the clearing numbers someone can drain your checking account and you bank WILL NOT be able to reverse the transaction. Additionally, since it is a wire transfer the bank is not obligated to reimburse you for the loss.
Think about. Would you give the keys to your house to someone you didn't know? If not, why would you give the keys to your checking account to someone at all?
As long as Google lets me use my credit card as a funding mechanism for my account then I am all over it. Ask for the keys to my checking account and I will shop elsewhere.
(___|___)
http://goodluv.diaryland.com/kissU.html
would be to simply be a broker. I think Google is one of the few web companies that people would trust to do something like Passport -- give your bank and address details to Google, and then give your Google/GMail account credentials to other websites so they can access them.
Passport, evil though it was, really addressed a real need. Constantly entering address and credit card details is a real barrier (for me at least) to buying from new sites. From that point of view, it might tie in nicely with Froogle, since they'll already be working with those sites for data interchange.
-Esme
You have to have a lot of volume before "interest on the float" becomes viable.
All the points made on this page are good ones -- well all of them with decent moderation scores anyway -- anyone who has a clear sense of what the perfect internet treasury service should look like and is willing to compromise that vision slightly in the name of practicality, and who is willing to work for shares against the future
profits rather than a current paycheck, and who would want to help revive an old brand -- tipjar is older than paypal -- please fill out the comment form at tipjar.com and send me a message.
The people who comment on this slashdot post may become the core of the tipjar advisory board committee mailing list -- that would be ideal.
Tipjar began when I was the treasurer of the University of Kansas City Association for Computing Machinery studetn chapter, which meant that I was responsible for collecting dues and writing checks from the club bank account. This was in the early nineties. the Common Gateway Interface standard had just been finalized, and I decided to write a web service to allow new club members to sign up, and pay their dues.
I realized that the general problem -- a web-service that models cash -- would be just as easy to solve as the specific problem -- managing the database of the club membership -- so I decided to solve that.
The president of the club thought that operating a general purpose micropayments service was outside the scope of the charter of our club, so tipjar LLC was incorporated in '95 or '96 and I set up the tipjar.com web service, with security provided by keeping the "vault" of financial info -- the accounts database -- on a computer that only connected to the internet to exchange current transactions with the web service every few minutes over a dialup modem then disconnected, which ran on a 75 mhz pentium in the breakfast nook of my studio apartment. A full size tower case with rotating feet, with a label that says "Trillian 386." I still have it. It may resume the role at some point. The feet are cute, and the HGTTG reference is priceless.
Version 2 of the vault was opject oriented and ran on the same machine but in a friend's basement, where it was restricted to only call out every ninety minutes and was quite the annoyance on their phone line.
Later version 2 was moved to the back room of the "itsy bitsy spider day care" which was the first day care anywhere as far as we know to provide real-time pictures of the day care on a web page, for the benefit of the parents.
Version 2 has been shuttled around to various places, but hasn't operated since early 2005 -- there are hundreds of transactions entered into the system right now that will get processed when vault version 2 is powered up again.
Tipjar models cash as follows:
I experimented with taking credit cards through KAGI once and was defrauded.
Paypal is essentially tipjar plus credit cards.
The other tipjar products -- the advenge/pay2send e-mail stamping scheme, the "tipjar debt framework" system, and other ideas that there may be a demand for -- may make just as much sense built on top of a generic transactions layer as on top of an in-house transactions layer.
As a federally registered "money handling service" tipjar has to report large transactions -- more than ten thousan
You've never been to a swap meet (or similar markets) have you? Oh nevermind...you like shrink-wrapping and think something that's like that should be priced like it's used. Wake up and smell the last milenia. You aren't going to get a 5 year Best Buy warranty (30 day money back!) with that eBay purchase. The world has been built on "as-is" and it's buyer beware. If you can't be on your toes when purchaseing something from eBay it's your own fsking fault when you get scammed with an as-is item. Check feedback, find out if the seller deals in the stuff they are selling that you want, if so have people been happy with it, if so GET THE DAMN $2 INSURANCE. If you don't do any part of that process your a dumbass and need to go sit in the corner until you learn your lesson. I'm not defending eBay, but theres a point where you have to either suck it up and wake up to reality or take your ball and go home where only your parents will listen to you because you did something stupid.
And those buyers right behind me are welcome to it. I don't deal with PayPal because they don't deal with me. After two successful credit-card purchases (no chargebacks or anything else out of the ordinary), PayPal wanted my checking account information before they would let me use my credit card again. (Note that this is only for purchasing, not selling.) I refused, and the upshot is that I am now on PayPal's perpetual blacklist: PayPal says not to bother calling, since their agents will have no information available on my account.
If PayPal wants to treat me like a criminal because I value my privacy, that's their privilege. It's my privilege not to have anything to do with them (or with any PayPal-only merchant).
Why not bite the hand that feeds if it isn't feeding you well enough, and it is a stupid, awful implementation of a hand in the first place? :-)
Honestly, eBay and PayPal are truly awful implementations (both in terms of UI and architecture) that I'm sure that Google could easily top. Google would make more money from getting small percentages of sales dollars than from advertising dollars from ebay.
I know for a fact that with 10-20 good programmers, I could do a WAY better job than eBay and still provide better customer support than they do with their thousands of people. I actually turned down a job offer from eBay because I couldn't figure out why they had so many people there and what they all did.
Yahoo! Auctions was better in many regards and it was free, but eBay had the headstart and namebrand recognition. Oh well.
I'd love to see Google or Y! kill off eBay, or at least force ebay/PayPal to not suck so much.
Yes, it is a system where you need to trust the seller. A system where two parties cannot trust each other is one which can be highly abused, anyway. The current credit card system in the US is just that. Merchants can rip off credit card owners by charging extra things. Credit card owners can harm merchants by reversing charges. There's no real control in the system. It forces both parties to not trust each other.
If you can't trust the seller, don't buy. Or at least buy through an escrow agent you both can trust.
For small things, a fer dollars perhaps, the system can let you deal with untrusted sellers. You can lose a few dollars, but simply not come back if you get ripped off. You simply have to understand that it's a cash transaction and your money is gone.
One thing this has over current bank payment systems is that it is fast. Payments can be processed in a few seconds if one side is automated, or a few minutes if both parties are doing it manually. What seller's info are you expecting to get?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
dada21 also doesn't know that "BMW" as acronym means "Bring Mich Werkstatt" in German ;-)
(Ok, it really means "Bayerische Motorenwerke" (Bavarian engine works), but hey..)
Why would Paypal's businessman openly say he's a skeptic? If he's publicly worried, his stock will decline based on expectations and forecasts. Complaining in public will do no good, think that will stop google? How was this practical?
The second Google sets up an auction site I'll cancel my eBay account ^_^
Mod parent up. This is an awesome idea. Start the project on sourceforge!
That's interesting. The world was also built on slavery and big strong guys beating up on weak guys. Glad to see you defend unethical acts and the framework which supports them with the ol' "It's Traditional" argument.
I guess I'm just not an eBay person. My time is too valuable to spend that time and effort to save $5.00 on some thing I didn't really need. Because, if you NEED it, you're not going to be happy with auctions which last days and the chance of getting sniped at the end.
However, if you are a shit-broke loser who has all the time in the world to check auctions from his mommy's basement....eBay probably kicks ass.
Blar.
I knew it would come down to that. You can't imagine ever solving this problem, so you just throw up your hands and say it's unsolvable...and that everyone should just deal.
Blar.
I never said that. You're batting fairly low with baseless attacks & now putting words in my mouth now. I do actually work to help try to solve such problem which is a bit more than I can say for others. Like say those that have such a dim & narrow view on such things as eBay because they can't seem to see let alone think outside of the itty-bitty microclasim that amounts to the excuse that is their life. Outside of an armed revolution, "Status Quos" are just as slow to change as the Status Quo moves.