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Another Google Tool To Take On PayPal?
An anonymous reader writes to mention a ZDNet post about another possible product in the grand Google vision. The product, Google Checkout, may be an attempt to go after PayPal. From the article: "Since we know Google is behind its registration, what is Google Checkout going to be? I think it will be a shopping cart system to help websites accept payment for their items online. The money site owners make will be deposited into a holding account at Google -- just like AdSense works. Isn't this starting to sound a lot like PayPal? Who knows, they could even offer a Google branded Mastercard "debit card" like PayPal's ATM/Debit Card -- after all, the domain googlemastercard.com is registered to Google too."
The problem with the article is that it's basing an awful lot on just a domain name. I could think of many other things it *could* be, like a shopping store, an auction site a la ebay, and more. It could also be a simple ecommerce software site, which I think is the most likely. My biggest counter to the argument for a paypal site is if this Google Checkout is a commercial venture like PayPal, why haven't they snabbed GoogleCheckout.com?
Google's money spinning machine has just one huge flaw. You geeks know that. By design nobody can tell which of those clicks on ads are from real people and which ones are from dogs (and monkeys and bots).
They are not fighting PayPal. They want to charge customers not for delivering clicks but for delivering customers. If the clickers on the ads actually use their checkout service to buy then who cares if the clicker is a dog or a bot. It is a dog who has cash to spend.
Google registered a domain, so therefore they must be planning a service around it? Wow. Let's take a look at some other domains Google has registered...
Gbrowser.com - I wonder how that's doing.
Googleblows.com - Hm.. so much to speculate on.
Googledoodle.com - A drawing platform, maybe?
Googleporn.com - It's about time!
Here's my favorite: Googlemotherf**ker.com.
Google regularly buys domain names just so others won't. The fact that they bought googlecheckout.net might just mean they don't want someone else masquerading as a Google checkout service.
Have you actually had any bad experiences with paypal? I have read through these Paypal Sucks websites and find some of the stories to be quite far-fetched. I have been using Paypal for years, and never had any problems. A representative from paypal actually called my house phone about ten minutes after I had sold a laptop to a buyer with a fraudulent credit card, informing me of the situation and telling m enot to ship the item. I was very impressed. They know their stuff, and they honestly dont suck. Now if M$ buys them up i'm not going to be so sure, because they are the last people I would want to have access to my bank account / credit card info.
Garett Rogers has it all wrong.
Google maybe setting up a new and improved Froogle with Store Fronts similar to Yahoo Shopping.
"Google Checkout" could be used for stores in froogle to accept payments.
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What's with all the speculation about what google is going to do next? So they own a few domains... they've had gbrowser.com for like a year now... it means squat.
If you were a company with lots of money in the bank, wouldn't you register domain names for 10 bucks a pop that have your name in them, to prevent squatters and to keep your options open? I'm sure google has hundreds of domains, and not all of them will turn out to be new google ideas at all...
I have this really funny quote that I like to put here. Unfortunately, there's this really annoying thing called a char
The next five years are always interesting.
This space available.
Very true. It's also hard not to suck if you only look at the worst cases, as that site listed above clearly does.
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