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Google vs. eBay/PayPal
That's Unpossible! writes "Google has today made a small announcement on their blog which could shake up the landscape of buying things online : they are going to start allowing certain parties to sell items through Google Base, which people can buy using credit cards linked to their Google Account. According to another blog post, Google already accepts payments in this fashion for Google Video, Google Earth, Google Store, etc. How long until Google Base is directly competing with eBay? The framework is now in place."
Don't forget that eBay already has a HUGE customer-base established, in addition to having some odd categories which I never thought would get any attention but looking at the listings there's quite a few items already :P Not to mention that thanks to goldenpalace's advertisement stunts (ie: buying odd objects off eBay for exorbitent prices) eBay already got a pretty good spotlight on TV. Two things to keep in mind here:
- When buying the shop that has lots of selection will hold lower prices
- As a seller, I'm looking to get maximum exposure when I sell something.
Those two factors, I believe, will give google a pretty good run.
Erik
That the service is going to be a Beta?
I got screwed over by PayPal.
I sold something on eBay, and opted to print out a UPS label, and pay for the shipping directly through their PayPal system. Started the process and everything was fine, I paid for it, and only needed to print the label out.
Crap! I didn't have the right kind of paper (I wanted to use label material) so I had to go find some in my wife's office.
By the time I got back, my session had timed out. I went back to my original eBay item, and followed the same process. Thinking that it would register as the same shipping/payment. Wrong, it charged me again.
Okay...fine, I'll just cancel the first one.
Can't cancel a shipping payment until UPS receives the electronic statement from PayPal. Okay, I'll check back the next day.
Whoops- can't cancel a shipping payment after 24 hours have passed.
eBay customer service did ONE thing for me when I contacted them about this. They confirmed that I was screwed.
$46 down the drain because their sessions time out too quickly. Fuck them...
No reason to lie.
* Drive to innovate
* Prices closer to the actual cost of the service
* External Innovators can become suppliers as the companies get creative to win market share.
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If you've looked at eBay, there is more then just the buy-it-now auction type. There are multiple auction types depending on what type of items you're selling. As far as eBay being singled out, I admit there are other auction sites which are probably doing as good, but none of them are as well known to common luser as eBay. Now think about searchh engines... Doesn't Google feel that same type of way? even ppl who don't own computers know what google is. That's called visibility. Google going in the business of running an auction site, it has alot of visibility compared to other auction sites competing with eBay, not because it's better established (it's not even open yet, no customer-base) but because they're already getting lots of visits at their page b/c of their search engine services.
The conclusion is that you can offer the best product in the world but if you have no visibility to your target audience, you won't sell.
Erik
Google Dollars: trade one-to-one with US currency a la Disney Dollars
Google History: send actual wireless webcams back in time and space to search history
Google Genes: pick your baby's DNA from Google's wide base of genetic data. Google Cyber-Implants: when you're *really* assimilated! Have the power of Google searches on tap in your own brain. Win every trivia game show. Ace every test. View porn just by thinking about it.
eBay is of the main advertisers on Google, they bought over 600,000 keywords last year alone. eBay doesnt have enough static pages for Google to index it properly so this is a nesscessary evil. Without eBay's support of Google, you're taking a loss of about 10M+. That's a pretty big hand to bite.
eBay has traditionally always had competition, and if anything this only helped it grow even larger. Look at Yahoo and Amazon, they couldn't even take it. The fact is that eBay is a differenet company now, than before. It's shifted it's focus from being an "auction" site, to being a marketplace.
Google is a great speculator, and it really has to be with the way it's stock is. A tighter integration of eBay and Google would be an intelligent move, eBay is a proven company, with rising stock for the last 10 years, and continuing to post profits well above expectations. PayPal, like it or not, is still the most reliable and easiest way to pay for things, and I'm sorry, but I've used it for well over 100 transactions and unlike my credit card and bank account, I dont pay an annual fees as a customer, and as a seller, it's a lot cheaper than the cost of getting a merchant account.
The point is this, eBay stands to lose ground in the market it's saturated. Google will have to figure out how to deal with fraud, customer/seller debate and at the same time promote it's product in a non-competitive manner such that it doesn't lose it's main advertiser.
Short of that, if Google decides to lock horns with eBay, I'm pretty sure you'll see eBay take a cut in it's stock to retain and regrow it's own markets. Competition is healthy, but I really doubt that this is anything more than posturing.
On an aside, pick a popular product, Froogle it, most of the vendors I've dealt with have had huge problems, lie or deliberately mislead me on price. Now add 10 million amateurs, wannabes, and fraudsters, and tell me that I can reasonably expect a better experience than eBay.
PayPal and eBay are both very successful venues and means. They've become (at least, in the US) universally known and serve as the Kleenex tissue of online payments and the Styrofoam foam of online buy/sell/auction, respectively.
.99 with $19.99 shipping {nudge, nudge}) and accept payment through PayPal at this point. It would be nice to see an alternative.
I do believe that it would be nice to get some real competition going for these companies - and perhaps Google has the chutzpah to pull it off (not to mention the cash). I, for one, would love to see some new ideas in the auction/sell/pay space. It could also keep the costs of these services relatively in check, as well.
It costs a very large percentage of a sale to sell something on eBay (that is, unless you are a super-seller who can get away with selling an item for
A Passionate Independent Musician
I know what you mean about the ethics. Google started out in 1997, when IBM came to them and said "we need a search engine, and fast". Of course, Brin wasn't all that talented, and couldn't write one on his own, so he went to Yahoo and said "hey, let me buy this search engine off of you for $50,000, no one wants the things anyway". Then he turned around and sold it for $100 million.
Years later, we have google bundling all sorts of seperate software together, and constantly raising the price on them because there are no competitors. When some little search engine tries to get it's website registered, Google threatens to cut off ICANNs balls, and boom, that little search website only gets to be used via IP address. The list of abuses is insane.
And when that antitrust lawsuit was filed, who would have thought the DOJ prosecutor would be assassinated with a carbomb?