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eBay Bans Google Payments
whoever57 writes "eBay has added Google Checkout to the list of payment options banned on eBay. A recent update to the Accepted Payments Policy includes Google Checkout (click on 'Show' next to 'Some Examples' to reveal the list).
More comments on this action can be found at the eBay Strategies Blog."
I want to be the first to predict Google sues eBay for monopolistic practices or some other restriction on open and fair trade! <8^) This is just begging those two extremely rich guys up Highway 101 to see who has the best lawyers and legs to stand on. Honestly, IANAL, but I don't see it as within the rights of eBay to dictate how people accomplish the financial transactions for Rearranging the World's Junk, as they are merely the facilitators.
I also predict Google will win, but eBay will try to make it as clunky as possible.
There's just something about the culture within eBay which is visible to outside world, that these people are real dorks when it comes to business, but like Microsoft, were in the right place at the right time, which seems to go a very long way in business and the public forgiving leaders for bad practices.
And that wouldn't have anything at all to do with PayPal being a property of eBay and further lining their pockets. ;-)
What next, coining their own money and then claiming payments can only be made with their own eBucks? I think the US Federal Reserve would have a thing or two to say about that.
Then again, this could be a push to more people offering their stuff on Craig's List. I wonder if eBay's 25% interest in that would be leveraged to interfer.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I have been using them for years and they keep getting more expensive and more restrictive.
Unfortunately, there isn't a good alternative yet.
I don't understand how eBay can say a type of payment can not accepted. Doesn't it depend on the person selling it what methods of payment they use? What if eBay didn't like Mastercard, could they say that Mastercards can not be accepted by anyone using eBay? Does this mean that someone like me who REFUSES to use Paypal can never buy anything on eBay, because I must go through their payment system?
Kernel Krunch - Part of a Complete OS
This shows that eBay fears Google's new service. Ebay is starting to show its age and lack of innovation. It needs competition from the likes of Google and anyone else that can challenge them. I stopped using eBay due to the high fees. Good luck Google and I hope you bring a good fight!
http://religiousfreaks.com/eBay provides a number of non-paypal alternatives and it's not about monopolistic practices. They have a list of accepted vendors on their website which includes Allpay.net, Bidpay, Canadian Tire Money, cash2india, CertaPay, Checkfree.com, hyperwallet,com, Moneybookers.com, Ozpay.biz, Payko.com, Paymate.com.au, Propay.com, and XOOM. In addition, any merchant-type VISA/Mastercard/etc account is valid, as is a direct exchange of checks, wire transfers (bank to bank), etc.
The list of unapproved money exchanges includes a lot of services including Western Union, so the hue and cry about antitrust and "eBay only allows their own stuff" is nothing more than a bunch of smoke without a fire. eBay specifically states that any "new" service without a track record of privacy protection and customer service will be scrutinized and most likely prohibited until it has some history.
Everyone's quick to bitch and whine about eBay not going after fraud, not going after bad sellers, not backing them up on financial transactions and the like yet when eBay DOES try and show some spine and protection everyone piles on. It has less to do with the "paypal competition" than it does with "we have no idea how stable, how reliable and how safe this service is and we're saying no until such time as it does appear to be safe, private and protected"
Pick a direction to go, guys... do you want eBay to get the hell completely out of your way and act like nothing more than a broker and middleman or do you want them to try and put stuff in place to protect people because you can't have it both ways.
-- Gary F.
Then eBay would ban Paypal, since Paypal is notorious for ripping off customers, refusing to arbitrate disputes like they're supposed to, and sit on your money for a week when you want to transfer funds to pay for a purchase. After all, it's not like eBay has a vested interest in the continued support of allowing paypal while banning the non-evil Google, right? Oh wait a second, Paypal = feeBay. Can you say anticompetitive business practice where they are leveraging a monopoly in one market segment in order to maintain dominance in another?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Google has announced that due to large amounts of fraud taking place at eBay.com they will now block all of their pages to protect its users. Wonder how feeBay would feel about that one. Or better yet just quit taking eBay's money and see how they fair without some advertising on their site.
No, I doubt it. Honestly, they are not forced to use any other payment method than they used to support. Just like the grocery store and KMart dont take all credit cards and not everywhere takes checks.
Sigs are nice guns
eBay provides a number of non-paypal alternatives and it's not about monopolistic practices. They have a list of accepted vendors on their website which includes Allpay.net, Bidpay, Canadian Tire Money, cash2india, CertaPay, Checkfree.com, hyperwallet,com, Moneybookers.com, Ozpay.biz, Payko.com, Paymate.com.au, Propay.com, and XOOM. In addition, any merchant-type VISA/Mastercard/etc account is valid, as is a direct exchange of checks, wire transfers (bank to bank), etc.
I had to check for myself after reading the above to verify that the inclusion of Canadian Tire Money in that list wasn't a joke. It really is there!
Few Canadians would accept CT$ as a form of payment. Many would consider an attempt to do so to be a goofy joke, or worse. Yet eBay won't accept GooglePay, or even more established providers like Neteller. Hmmm...
(Note for those who don't know: Canadian Tire is a chain of hardware-turned-department stores whose gimmick is that they provide currency-like coupons as cashback on purchases.)
Don't take a percentage of the sales.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They may include other methods, but are these a threat to Paypal?
Fight Spammers!
It has a monopoly on auctions.
Except for some specific niche markets, eBay is The Place to go for online auctions. It's as dominant as Microsoft is in operating systems.
You don't get to use a monopoly in one area to manipulate the market in another.
I find it more amusing that they specifically allow Canadian Tire Money...
Now I'm starting to wish I had more of that stuff. Paying for an expensive ebay auction entirely in Canadian Tire Money would be a whole new kind of awesome.
This is a very interesting concept, because I don't think it would work the same way if Google banned Ebay results from coming up in the results. I think Ebay would be rather T.O'd for that IMHO.
-- Brought to you by Carl's JR
Please explain the point of linking to a non-existent site. It's enough to say Google Auctions, you don't have to annoy people by pretending like it already exists (or that the URL contains, uh, anything at all).
Dumb.
I quote:
I wonder why eBay believes Google Checkout is unsafe, unreliable and/or inconvenient? Seriously, this isn't an obscure, complicated, foreign payment system. It's pretty obvious to me why they really did this, and with this, they're most likely lying about it.
As the link in the article summary also says, even calling Google Checkout something lame like being "too new" doesn't hold much water, given what Google Checkout is.
I have nothing against eBay doing this, but only if they up front told either exactly why, the harsh reality and competition, or didn't comment on it at all. Anything would be better than lying or spreading FUD about certain competitors like this. It's really bad style IMO.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I know it's "wrong", but really...corporations are allowed to do what they want.
Uhm... no. There are laws and rules and regulations they have to follow, just like there are laws and regulations and rules *you* have to follow.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Right! That's a bit of a simplistic and biased view. Google needs eBay's advertizing money just as much as eBay needs traffic. Google may not need eBay's advertizing money to not go bankrupt next month, but it's not like people don't already know about eBay either and needs google to get traffic.
And if google makes a ebay-like site, a tiny portion of google fans will go there. But most online sellers are already established at ebay, and most buyers already know and like the place. They won't use google's, just like they won't use other auction sites (like yahoo's), nor most of the google products (besides search and perhaps gmail). And it'll stay beta for 5 years + (people will trust a "beta" product for their money surely)
Please consider purchasing your new from the following vendors who have an established track record.
Right. And google has a good track record you'd say? Except when it comes to money seemingly. "Click fraud" anyone? And ridiculous settlement for the class action lawsuit? i.e. For every thousand dollars you can prove, we'll give you 5 back in forms of more advertizing i.e. more fraudulent clicks (and an opt-out strategy to screw people over)! And all the logging they do. And China. etc. I don't think they're necessarily better than eBay/paypal really.
I welcome competition and alternatives, but not from google. They're becoming the new Microsoft (actually, I find them scarier now)
Of course, this is slashdot, and I've talked against the god-oh-mighty google, so this'll get modded to "-500, not a google fanboy"
Y'all are postulating what Google should do. Have they even made a statement? Maybe they are negotiating with EBay right now, and EBay is holding out temporarily while they hash it out?
All you litigation-prone folk would make bad business managers. Google and EBay are both profitable companies. Litigation for its own sake is for losers. They are right now negotiating. That's business.
Be heard || Be herd
As I posted last week on that Google Checkout story ( http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=189880&cid =15630137 ), eBay explicitly bans ALL payment services that eBay hasn't reviewed and approved; and I guarantee they're either going to take years to 'review' Google Checkout, or they'll find some reason "for your protection" to permanently ban Google Checkout.
o cus=bs&sbrftog=1&catref=C6&from=R10&satitle=%22goo gle+checkout%22&sacat=-1%26catref%3DC6&bs=Search&f ts=2&fsop=1%26fsoo%3D1&coaction=compare&copagenum= 1&coentrypage=search&sargn=-1%26saslc%3D2&sadis=20 0&fpos=75050&ftrt=1&ftrv=1&saprclo=&saprchi=)
The interesting thing is to see how strictly eBay will enforce this rule - if they're really going to focus on forcing Google Checkout out of eBay, or if it'll be yet another rule that is only enforced from time to time.
The company I work for is an eBay PowerSeller, and we've noticed there's basically three types of policy violations in eBay's eyes:
1. those that eBay checks for when you list an item (try listing an item with 'pearl' in the title sometime to see what I'm talking about) and then either denies your listing or displays a warning message and flags your listing;
2. violations that eBay only acts on when reporting by another user (usually NOT a buyer, it's almost always a competitor);
3. violations that eBay is worried enough about that they write a program to automatically scan all open listings looking for violations.
Right now, it looks like Google Checkout falls into the second type - there's over 3,000 active listings that mention accepting Google Checkout (ref. http://search-desc.ebay.com/search/search.dll?sof
So eBay obviously hasn't stepped up enforcement of this rule. However, if the number of current listings that mention Google Checkout drops suddenly, then it will be obvious that eBay has started treating Google Checkout like an item in the third type, not the second. This would be a policy shift to explicitly combat Google Checkout, instead of just discouraging it.
I don't think PayPal would be around today, or would have the market share it does, if it wasn't for eBay buying them out and then cramming PayPal down everyone's throats. The stories I could tell about how PayPal really "protects" both the buyers and the sellers and how completely they've managed to brainwash so many buyers and sellers.... But as long as eBay is "not an auction" and PayPal is "not a bank" and "not a credit card", I don't see anything changing any time soon. eBay has already shown that it is all but unbeatable in the auction marketplace (look at Yahoo Auctions, and they're -free- now; Overstock.com auctions are another competitor that is all but defeated) - they've so completely tied PayPal into eBay and integrated it into so many of their requirements (there's certain buying and selling requirements that force you to establish a PayPal account, even if you never plan to accept or use PayPal) that I don't see anyone defeating PayPal, at least in the auction marketplace, any time soon.
Google's best remaining chance to take PayPal on, head-on, would be to setup Google Auctions, and even then, eBay really has captured a frightening amount of loyalty and dedication from hundreds of thousands of buyers and sellers...it would be an interesting fight.
Ban Google for possible "fraud" concerns? If that's the case, eBay should ban Paypal and itself!! Those two are the main gateways of fraud if there ever was one.
eTrade SUCKS
Coming Soon: Google Auctions.
Don't you mean Google Auctions beta?
...you can pay your Adwords bill with PayPal?
Why cut IT when your office space costs $3/sf? gibso
Nonsense. Google's going to keep it in-house, just like everything else they do.
Bzzz...Wrong!
Google Checkout has been around for years; it's what they use to transfer money around for AdSense/AdWords. What's new is that they're finally opening it up to be used for any and all services.
Here is an article with an interesting quote from Google, "Google Checkout is not a beta product. Google has a long history in billing and payments for AdWords and for premium services, such as Google Video."
I would wager my entire net worth that eBay knows that Google Checkout is well established. I'm guessing they crapped their pants and reacted with this changed policy. I also heard that they changed their payment policy name from "Safe Payment Policy" to "Accepted Payment Policy" with the addition of Google Checkout to their list of unacceptable payment policies.
As others have said, this is clearly a case where eBay is using their monopoly to control another market, and I sincerely hope that there is restitution. You can bet that I will be using Google Checkout for my auctions on eBay, and if eBay tries to suspend my account, they will be getting a letter from my lawyer (as I'm sure they've already received a few from Google's lawyers).
That is not an apt analogy. eBay are not the sellers - they are just offering the service, and taking a fee. It should be up to sellers how they complete their transaction. It's not at all like department-store credit cards. They could ban payment of eBay fees by various methods, but why should they restrict their customer's private transactions?
... and then they built the supercollider.
While google is a big name in other services, eBay has absolutely no way of verifying the security measures that Google Payments offer.
This is simply not true. Ebay has all sorts of means to verify this. For example, I'm sure Google would be more than happy to answer any questions that ebay has regarding their security polices. I'm sure the financial institutions that Google works with to provide this service would also be just as helpful.
The FUD is the whole "lack of a track record" claim. It's completely subjective. This isn't some fly-by-night operation without established credit or capital reserves, it's freakin Google. There's no credible evidence that there's a security issue here, there is only fear, uncertainty and doubt being spread on the part of ebay. It's the very definition of FUD.
Life is too short to proofread.
If I want to buy something off of an auction, I would go to eBay and search for what I was looking for.
... and what really sucks is that a lot of the auction spam is for stuff where the actual auctions have been over for quite some time.
I can't stand going to Google and searching for something, only to have a bunch of auction spam pages come up in the top links
Heck yeah, let Google ban eBay and bask in the glory as we all rejoice!
Transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
RE: Driving.
I get it -- you probably don't have a car. You don't have to drive to the store, they will ship it to you - if you want, but most people (myself included) are impatient, I have a BMW and enjoy driving and I want my new LCD screen right now, not tomorrow and I don't want to risk it getting banged up in shipping or stolen off my doorstep (less insurance!)
Even if you have it shipped - it will come from local inventory it will be cheaper, it will arrive in one day via ground (cheaper shipping).
RE: Sales Tax --
Yes, you have to pay sales tax EITHER WAY. A lot of online users make the assumption that there is no sales tax on the Internet -- this is NOT TRUE.
If you're a company you have to report the sales tax right now.
I expect within 2-3 years the that the states will have set aside their petty differences and figured out an Internet sales tax. There is just too much money on the table (and that number is growing everyday)
RE: Salespeople --
It's very likely that there will be some sort of feedback mechanism, so if the salesperson is rude then it's likely google would stop sending business there - they don't want to alienate customers at any price, it's just not worth it.
However as far as "pushy" salespeople -- like it or not, they do generate results, the companies which employ them generate more money, and can afford to do more marketing and give out more loss leaders. Welcome to business 101.
The problem with your assertion is that the majority of transactions, at least in areas where I buy stuff on ebay, is personal sellers unloading personally owned items to others, and not new merchandise from a business to consumer. That's something Craigslist can do, but does poorly because everything is local and it's fixed price/best offer. Your model works great for new items, but not for used or hard to find items. I sell on ebay as well, and while I dislike their policies and BS, I also realize that for what I buy and sell there is no larger market. And what to I buy? Music gear. The sellers on ebay trying to sell new gear rarely make money because the people there aren't willing to pay, while those of us who own or buy used gear can sell it at a reasonable price (more than we'd get selling to Guitar Center or the local music shop) while those of us who buy can get it for cheaper than any brick or mortar store would be willing to sell it for. I've tried selling on Craigslist, and I've sold on ebay. Ebay always makes me more money, even after fees, and it gives me a much wider audience for my used music gear.
Remember the Alamo, and God Bless Texas...
Well, I suppose they have the right to do it play hardball if they want. And users have the right to make a lot of noise about it.
I think the reason Google is so popular among this crowd is that they tend to rise above this sort of thing. For instance if you search for an address they offer the yahoo maps option as well. If you have a gmail account, they do several things that allow you to avoid lock-in (allowing you to use a different email as the from address, forwarding mail for free, etc). Google may be as greedy as the rest of them, it's just that their strategy for making the most money involves being perceived (by those who pay attention) as being "non evil". And that's good, I hope more companies adopt that strategy. And I hope people do pay attention.
So who knows if what ebay is doing is illegal. It is against the interests of its users, as well as being disingenuous to say the least. When a company does such a thing, I hope the users continue to make a big deal of it.
I think this just highlights what a mess the whole issue of net banking/payment is in.
I use several sites for buying goods, but EBay is a good example, so I'll use that:
As noted throughout this discussion, EBay only allows certain payment methods - foremost is Paypal. The others aren't anything like as useful because they are restricted to a geographic location (err.. why?) or just a way of processing credit card payments. Worse still, a lot of sellers seem to be locked into Paypal as well. So, OK, I use Paypal - I don't have any major reasons to worry about that except... Paypal won't allow me to use my (Italian) bank account for payments. Others, such as netteller will, but they in turn won't allow me to transfer funds to Paypal. In fact, even though I have several on-line account facilities, it is very nearly impossible to move funds from one to the other.
What gives? These days I can route data from anywhere to anywhere via the 'net using a plethora of methods; but not money. I wonder if this is deliberate.
IT'S A MESS!
I think the real issue here is not that google's alternative is new, it's that it's google. They have no problem allowing small, unknown payment alternatives -- because they are small and unknown. Anything branded Google, however, is just a bit more threatening. . .