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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."
IANAL, but I'm curious, could this be considered monopolistic practice?
"What does slashdotting mean?"
"You've never heard of slashdot?"
"I know it makes websites not work."
Why sue them when they can probably implement auctions.google.com in much less time. I am pretty sure google could implement a much better auction setup than eBay, and the kicker? They won't ban you from using paypal.
Google Auctions.
eBay, just like PayPal, are in a position of almost total dominance. Google are one of few companies in a position to compete with them.
If you can't join them, beat them.
I think of Google as the "kindly predator." It makes its rounds around several industries and outdoes everyone whose services it competes with.
Do you really think that Google will settle with a lawsuit or court settlement? This may very well be one of the leading reasons to an upcoming auction service, perhaps an eBay killer, likely named gBay.
Unfortunately, there isn't a good alternative yet.
I think you meant "anymore". In the 90's there were quite a few "auction" sites on the internet. eBay's marketing and consolidation have driven most of them either offline or turned them into standard retailers. It's possible some new one could spring back up, but I think it's unlikely. More likely, I think, is eBay just fades into obscurity leaving only free sites like craigslist in its place as people get tired of the hassle and frustration of doing business through eBay.
E pluribus unum
Actually, Kmart own Sears
You know, it seems more often then not, when I search Google for a product, I sure get a lot of Ebay auction listings in the search results. I would imagine this brings many people into the Ebay auction scene when they otherwise would not have considered bidding instead of buying. Many, MANY people, I bet.
Perhaps Google should consider removing all ebay auctions from their search results? I'm sure the same phony logic that prohibits Google payments from ebay auctions could be used to remove auctions from search results, such as:
"Ebay auctions are not categorically safe transactions, so as a safety precaution, we are eliminating ebay auctions from our search results. Please consider purchasing your new from the following vendors who have an established track record. And coincidentally, these vendors accept payments with Google Payments."
Let's see who needs who then, ebay...
Kind of like how tobacco isn't a food or drug, so it avoided FDA regulations for a long time (still?).
Be heard || Be herd
It was mentioned on Slashdot last May that rumors were circulating about Microsoft acquiring Ebay:
3 1&from=rss
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/27/06502
The New York Post wrote:
"May 26, 2006 -- For several weeks Microsoft has been in discussions about a possible acquisition of online auctioneer eBay, The Post has learned.
According to multiple sources close to the matter, Microsoft has considered buying eBay and merging it with its MSN portal - a deal that would give MSN and eBay considerable clout to take on Google. "
http://www.nypost.com/business/64226.htm
There must surely be more to this move threat of eBay's than meets the eye. On the simple face of things I think eBay refusing Google payments would be like eBay cutting off its nose to spite its face. Google is the "golden child" of the moment and has tremendous clout and cache. EBay is brimming with fraud and losing many of its best sellers to Amazon. Customers who get ripped of by bogus sellers get little help from eBay or PayPal and there is an increasing resentment against them. EBay to refusing Google payments would just paint it even more into a corner. Seeing eBay's threat against a Microsoft merger would make more sense - even if its still a bad idea.
First off, I'm totally close to this business - and this was an anticipated move, predicted it almost 2 years ago now. eBay needs to protect their business for the upcoming storm. I fully expect eBay to be remembered in a few years similarly to the Modem (remember those?) .. yeah people still use 'em, but most everybody's got a broadband connection.
Google isn't going to release auctions, auctions are so 2001. NOBODY WANTS TO BID. The stuff you bid on is used crap, and honestly even then it falls into the "Working crap" and "broke crap". eBay is transitioning to a fixed price marketplace, so is Google. (Don't believe me, check out eBay express)
It doesn't matter where you buy online -- the price battles online are over, they were over last year, price differentials are minimal. If anything eBay sellers are at a disadvantage due to all the fees they incurr and the higher overhead from the resulting support cost. The next frontier is mobile commerce, or perhaps more appropriately "local commerce" -- which is where Google is clearly headed. All the analysts seem to miss that Google has a really clear 3 year plan, and it's pretty freaking awesome - here's how it goes:
1. Online prices are too similar, they are irrelvant.
2. Who has a product closest to me, and is reliable, lets buy it from them.
3. Will Google allow a local retailer to match "best price", or perhaps even come close -- you betcha.
Within two years -- i'll be able to buy an 19" LCD monitor for $99 from GoogleBase, after it negotiates the best price for me, then tells me to go pick it up at the local circuit city or fry's, where I pay via Google Payments when I arrive to pick it up (probably via my phone). Yupe, it's right around the corner.
The store will try to upsell me on other items while i'm there.
Google will get a cut of the entire sale, in exchange they'll be more likely to send more buyers to that store. The stores that do the poorest job upselling, will see less buyers (think Adwords).
And don't forget:
1) Ebay isn't an auction site.
and
2) Paypal isn't a bank.
Quite ironically, being a heavily-regulated bank gets you out of antitrust troubles. The theory is that there are specialized state and federal agencies taking care of the banks, so the antitrust laws should not have a big role regulating banks. The fact that eBay and PayPal can do whatever they want hurts them in the antitrust sphere. Furthermore, Ebay and PayPal are vertical: Ebay is a dominant auction site and they use PayPal for payment services. Thus, eBay is using its dominance of its field to exert market power into another field on a basis other than merit. That's pretty much an antitrust violation right there. It's doubtful eBay can come back with a reasonable, non-malicious explanation for not accepting GCheckout. Oops.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
The purpose of monopoly laws is not to crush an organisation so it never trades again. It's to stop them from illegally protecting a monopoly.
Where's IBM's monopoly? It seems to have worked in that case.
Obviously it did exactly nothing in the Microsoft case, but I don't think you can use IBM as an example of the system failing.
Advanced users are users too!
Personally I'd just like Google to drop Ebay's ridiculous ads.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
its not that you cant simply not deal with the monopoly, its that if you want to make those kinds of deals, the monopoly is becomming closer and closer to being your only choice.
A large amount of online transactions are processed through paypal and most of those are ebay (and most of ebay is paypal...etc). In terms of seperate companies, paypal and googlecheckout are both competing online payment vendors who use a third party to actually generate use of their service (in this case, ebay). In the 3 company world, ebay could only stand to benefit from another good payment service showing up, they wouldnt lose any transactions and they might gain a few from anti-paypal people. The problem lies in the fact that there are really only 2 companies here, ebay controls paypal and then stands to lose revenue if paypal loses transactions. If google enters the market, they will take more and more transactions away from paypal. They may also generate new transactions for ebay but not enough to eclipse the loss felt by paypal. What is the obvious self-interest first choice? Dont let people use things you dont own. Of course this ends up being bad for the consumer and potentially bad for ebay (things will stagnate or there will end up being a competitor who goes to court and wins) but at this point they arent thinking about that, they are just trying to keep their revenue stream (maybe they will switch to ebay-fee discounts or something to encourage paypal use which is probobly legal as long as its not huge).
This is akin to visa saying they will only let you pay down your credit card bill with a personal check, cashiers check/money order, or another visa card. No mastercard, no discover, and definately no american express. People are still going to have to pay that bill, so its not like people will dissapear but it will direct additional revenue into the pockets of visa while blocking out competitors. (ok so the example isnt perfect since most people dont pay with another credit card, the credit card industry is an oligopoly not a monopoly and people are a lot more comfortable paying with checks but. ..you get the point.
Bottles.
So, just what is it that makes Google Checkout inappropriate for eBay's marketplace? If that track record is anything to go by, PayPal most certainly shouldn't be allowed. Those bastards stole over a thousand bucks from me by freezing my account, and between their unreachable status and their position in a legal limbo as a quasi-bank-transfer-service-thing, I wasn't even given the option to bend over. I'd trust a new payment method which is a subset of a company with an excellent track record over an established payment method which is a subset of the rule-maker and known to screw people over regularly.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Actually, I cited them both to illustrate the deep pocket aspect, although one was more successful than the other. IBM is not a monopoly but they are still surviving despite a ten year or so defense, way back in the day. They had deep enough pockets to survive and even thrive. Monopoly suits are often to defend a specific business against a major competitor. If your pockets are deep enough, you can survive the suit as a business and still continue even if you are actually in violation. Microsoft is a good example of that result. The IBM suit is long enough ago that I don't know the facts of the case as well.
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
I think 1 and 2 most likely, but doing all these as soon as possible would be a real kick in the balls for ebay.
Life is too short to proofread.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Thanks, we'll take it!
Buyers stay on eBay because there's a big selection of stuff and they can find what they want
I'm currently working for a company that opened their auction site only 4 months ago, and yet we already have 40,000 active listings at any given point in time. Not a ton of stuff, (lots of drop-ship and storefronts), but at least it's better than the many, many, roadkill sites out there that look like they just "gave up".
Sellers won't defect unless another site offers them some other savings...
Most of our prices are lower than ebay, if only by a penny, (and the first image is free... stupid ebay has all of those "photo" icons). For "power-users", we have a price plan that allows up to 1000 listings per year for $419, or 42 cents a piece, plus a flat 5.25% final value fee on any auctions (none of this "how much do I have to pay" silliness).
That is, they would have to pay the sellers a commission on each auction to attract them...
Interesting idea, but notice that the "free" venues such as craigslist can only support such a model by keeping bandwith *way* low. The economics of defection is certainly a tough nut to crack, though. We're giving away vacations to purchasers. *shrug*
We're about 80% done on that one. We made our entry page look quite similar to... uhm... some other searching tool.
Most definitely. Now that wikipedia has crunched through the hard work of "how can LAMP scale into a top 20 site?", it's fairly easy to see how it can be done with pages that are dynamic *to the second*, without needing anywhere near ebay's level of infrastructure.
Perhaps others have better ideas...
We're working on it....
For example:
-Free items list for free in our "free stuff" area. No limit on listings, items, etc. It's simple, and cheap.
-We're really trying to pay attention to UI. I don't think very many people would even feel like defending eBay's UI, but we have meetings about color schemes, table vs. CSS tradeoffs, etc.
-Did I mention the first photo is free? ;D
-No reserve fees.
-No minimum/starting bid fees.
-No "Buy It Now" fees.
-Sellers can choose to offer any payment method they want.
-Everyone in the company is customer service first, coder/designer/whatever second. Contrast to "we don't care, we already have your money" sites, of which there are many.
-RSS feeds for "stores" are pre-built for store users.
(etc. etc. etc.)...
Basically, we're trying to make something like...iBay(?), or what Apple would do if they did an auction/classified site. Offer simpler features, with better UI, resulting in a better end-user experience.
Give them an either-or choice between a charge to list and advertise the item, and a final value fee.
So you have an option to pay like a $5 fee to list something for sale for 20 days and pick an adword for the item -- if it sells, then you can make up the difference in the sale price, without the auctioneer getting an extra percentage commission when the sale completes.
Alternatively, provide an option to list and advertise the item for up to 180 days for free, but when you do sell, the auctioneer gets $1 + 2%.
In any case, it's not hard to beat eBay, because they double-dip: when they tie their product with their PayPal product, they triple-dip; the seller winds up losing 6%, assuming they sell successfully -- the PayPal fees nearly double the cost, and since the shipping fee is part of the PayPal payment too, the seller loses again.
It becomes a major losing proposition to sell anything for under $20, unless shipping fees are padded (which is of course, against the rules).
Here's why: eBay hits sellers with high fees both when they list and when they sell; the seller takes on 100% of the risk, and eBay gets to keep a payout in the form of the "item insertion fee", before an auction starts even if the item does not sell, which is based on the starting price for the item, I.E. $0.20 to list an $0.01 item, $40 to list a vehicle, $100 to list a piece of real-estate --- last I checked they even charged extra for simple common features which should be free.. like buy it now, best offer, and reserve fees; they even charge for pictures.
Dunno about the monopolistic laws, but their tiered seller scheme should be illegal under most of EU consumer legislation. So far they have been getting away with it and operating in countries where pyramidal marketing is banned like Austria or Belgium.
As far as their culture - they bought N. Zenstrom. If that is not a classic case of "similar dissolves in similar" dunno what is.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Its interesting, I go over and read the list of banned payment services on the ebay web page and many of them are significantly cheaper than PayPal and Google. Understandably both the seller and the buyer would like to know that they can pay less fees when they are buying/selling or transfering funds around the world. It sounds very anti competitive, Although I am not sure about US laws but the Mastercard Worldcup issue sounds almost to familure.
Firstly, that is probably the policy that will get them in trouble. They are clearly using their monopoly to prevent new players in the industry.
Either they accept that Google's track record for online payments (for AdSense) is safe and effective, or they admit that they are trying to stomp on anyone who tries to compete with PayPal.
eBay provides a number of non-paypal alternatives and it's not about monopolistic practices
BULLSHIT
Bay 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.
A bank manager pulled that shit on me once. No credit card till you've been with the bank for a year. I politely walked out and went to a real bank. How is anyone suppose to get a history with something if they're not allowed to participate? History of something similar is not good enough, especially in the business world.
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.
My experience was that for a small value item (~USD20) I bought that was delivered late, broken and not as described was that Paypal/Ebay were unhelpful in the extreme. They gave me 10 days (not business days!) to get a company signed letterhead from a professional stating what the problem with the item was and I had to send it by fax internationally. I had bought by credit card and had a chargeback issued but had to mail the item back registered to do so. FUCK Ebay. FUCK Paypal. They certainly don't offer the services they imply they do.
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.
I want Paypal and Ebay to provide the services they claim they do instead of being unhelpful prats, taking money - charges the customer eventually wears. If they can't do that I wouldn't cry if they fell off the face of the planet.
This by the way is from someone who use to buy regularly on Ebay...I'm just glad I got burned on a small value item.
Meanwhile stop defending the damned company - they don't deserve it.
eBay's core business is stagnant. Growth has slowed in the US and in EU. Japan, the second biggest world ecomony, was a complete failure - they were unable to complete with a 6 month start Yahoo had on them. China is slowly heading the same way, eBay has only a tiny market share there.
eBay's share price has been on a slow downward spiral for the past 20 months or so.
eBay's brand is synonymous with fraud to many buyers, and with overcharging to many sellers.
eBay is ripe for takeover or serious competition, or at the very least, major change. Google just has to be patient and pick the spoils. eBay's act in banning Google checkout is one of quiet desperation, one they could have foreseen and prepared alternatives for a long time ago if they were more competetive, and innovative.