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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
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."
That Google had started Google Checkout. Perhaps since it's new eBay will be sure to give it a 'really close look' before they approve it, you know, for the benefit of the (ummm) users. You can trust them, they have a lot of good in house knowledge of Internet payment.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
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've been banned from eBay and I've had nothing to do with payments ... which is probably why they banned me come to think of it.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Cant beat em, ban em. When will they learn.
it's not so much that I'm surprised they banned google checkout, it's that I'm shocked they specifically allow Canadian Tire Money.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
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
Allowed:
Payment Services permitted on eBay: Allpay.net, Bidpay, Canadian Tire Money, cash2india, CertaPay, Checkfree.com, hyperwallet,com, Moneybookers.com, Ozpay.biz, Payko.com, Paymate.com.au, Propay.com, XOOM
Verboten:
Payment Services not permitted on eBay: AlertPay.com, anypay.com, AuctionChex.com, AuctionPix.com, BillPay.ie, ecount.com, cardserviceinternational.com, CCAvenue, ecount, e-gold, eHotPay.com, ePassporte.com, EuroGiro, FastCash.com, Google Checkout, gcash, GearPay, Goldmoney.com, graphcard.com, greenzap.com, ikobo.com, Liberty Dollars, Moneygram.com, neteller.com, Netpay.com, Nochex.com, paychest.com, payingfast.com, paypay, Postepay, Qchex.com, rupay.com, scripophily.com, sendmoneyorder.com, stamps, Stormpay, wmtransfer.com, xcoin.com
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.
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/I mean, how do you think eBay makes money? Not off of auction fees, nossir. PayPal fees.
Blar.
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.
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.
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.
if i use paypal do i also collect $200?
http://www.ronpaul2008.com/ Ron Paul for President 2008 http://www.infowars.com/
You just don't know how to use their website. The page consists of several sections, which can be expanded and collapsed by clicking the "show" and "hide" links in the section title bars. Click "show" on the second section title bar (labelled "some examples") to see the list of services which are and are not permitted.
That's an important point, but if protection from unproven services is the real reason for the ban it should be lifted in no time. It'll be interesting to see where eBay and PayPal stand with Google in a year.
I think that Google may include a claim for libel. Their implication to the methods that they accept is that those methods
are subject to fraud.
Fight Spammers!
Sure, Google could theoretically cross-promote everything on the auction sight to users of the main search service. That still wouldn't necessarily solve the critical mass problem, which allows eBay to kill off every other significant competitor -- if you need it, its on eBay. Thus, the buyers are on eBay. Thus, all sellers go to eBay. What would you have to offer the first couple hundred thousand auction sellers to convince them to go to Gooooogle?
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
If only that was remotely the same thing.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
No, it's still there. Nice dream, though.
Strange, considering they won't accept Canadian cash.
Canadians without a credit card cannot make online payments with paypal.
They will claim that a credit card is not required to use paypal, but once you have provided them with all of your personal info and banking information, they will tell you, oh - Canadians are required to have a credit card to use paypal. I was suprised by this underhanded information collection and false advertising by a supposedly trustworthy business.
Then I read some of the horror stories here: http://www.paypalsucks.com/ Scary stuff!
P.S. Does anybody know when/if slashdot intends to fix the pagination of threads? Its a pretty horrific bug for a techie site and makes browsing long threads (as this one will be) very frustrating...
They may include other methods, but are these a threat to Paypal?
Fight Spammers!
I would think the buyer would have to charge the seller to ship the Canadian Tire Money (CTM) considering no one ever really has more than $0.25 notes. I know I usually walk away with $0.15 - $0.50 after any purchase, the bricks of CTMs would be enormous. Unless of course there is some online version of CTM that I am not seeing.
Okay, I'm guessing, maybe this is how it happened:
An eBay executive was sitting around thinking, how can I get $5,000,000 of bad, sink-the-company publicity for almost free?
YES, that's it!!!! Do something against Google, which is, today, the equivalent of doing something against cute kittens.
eBay is an aution house, not a department store.
They're not refusing to accept a certain type of payment, they're BANNING sellers and buyers from using this payment method by listing it AS A SCAM.
Your analogy couldn't be more wrong IF YOU TRIED.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
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 wonder why it is Sears takes Mastercard and Visa today, yet no one seems to take a Sears card?
That analogy would hold if you could only use PayPal to pay for items bought off eBay. Since PayPal is a general payment system, it doesn't hold.
A more accurate analogy would be if Sears owned Visa and banned MasterCard and American Express purchases.
Its more like having a flee market and requiring that everyone use the orginizers brand of credit cards.
When was the last time your average flea market had extensive TOS agreements to help combat fraud, because that flea market has millions of people walking through it? In a flea market, you're standing, face-to-face, with the person you're thinking about doing business with. In most cases, it's cash and carry. The service that eBay provides (and which you do not have to use!) includes a lot more layers than a flea market. They charge for those extra layers, and people keep coming back with money in hand to pay for their listing/transaction services because they like having that enormous audience for their auctions. Will this erode some of that? Maybe. A bit. Too bad for eBay if they lose a few customers or transactions.
Will you complain if Google starts up their own auction site? Will that be Google being too "monopolistic," since they're just so big and powerful in other ways? If this was a mistake by eBay, the market will sort it out.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Also, Marty in 1955 was able to get that message from Doc in 1885 via WU and I'm guessing that's a pretty good customer service (location and time of delivery observed as requested), and probably privacy protection, if that dude delivering it didn't open the letter...
Serving time in Aristotelean prison for violating laws of physics
Will you be putting that on your Sears card?
eBay doesn't have a monopoly on payments.
It has a monopoly on auctions
This may be true, but I would consider it a natural monoploly. Someone else could start their own auction site (which has been done many times), but since most people trust ebay, and it has a critical mass, it's difficult to compete.
So, ebay lists Candian Tire Money (which for Americans not in the know is esentially a coupon that you get for using cash or Debit at Candian Tire, a department store with an automotive bent) which is directly in contrevention with
"Whether the payment model involves precious metals, or other non-cash (points, miles, minutes, coupons, discounts)"
but don't permit google checkout. IANAL, but as I understand antitrust laws, the definition of which is using a monopoly in one business to push into another -- Now Ebay itself as a service (auctions)is practically a monopolly, and though they own paypal, it is a seperate business/industry(payment processing), then they are using that monopoly in auctions to hurt competition in payment acceptance.
They had better provide valid reasons why options like that are not permitted, and expect to face lawsuits -- Google has shown itself not to be to shy about pushing it's case when appropriate.
I suspect they will back pedal citing some concern based on the list they had of reasons, and then state that a reevaluation of that policy that they decided that Google Checkout is appropriate.
More Caffeine. NOW
Three hours after the announcement that Google Checkout would no longer be accepted as payment for items on eBay. Google announced plans to blacklist the eBay.com domain from its search engine. Google spokesman Harrold Harris commented "Eat me eBay. We can do them more harm then they can do us; Google Checkout was just a Beta anyway." More at eleven.
If you are about to mod me down, keep in mind that this post was most likely sarcastic.
Do something against Google, which is, today, the equivalent of doing something against cute kittens.
Those kittens are only acting cute and doing cute things to trick you into feeding them and letting them into your bed. Don't be another victim.
It's not THAT difficult to build an auction site, and if anyone has enough weight to do it successfully, it's Google (not Amazon). Why would they want to even put this thought into their PhD heads?
eBay is an auction site, its users have the RIGHT to choose whom to use to pay!! I dislike PayPal for a long time already. eBay & PayPal both charge tons of fees.... leaving sellers little room to profit. Again, it's auction house but again No. It's unlike a conventional auction house that takes payment for buyer then pays the seller. eBay is, as they have claimed, to be a intermediary for both buyer & seller. So it's up to the buyer & seller to use any PAYMENT METHOD they desire. Not up to eBay. PayPal has been pretty lame since it has been bought out by eBay. I find it very annoying because of its money-making scheme (money that is already in the system is still charged at the same rate). It's time for another leading power to take on this otherwise ebay is just another monopoly.
It's inconvenient for people that didn't intend to use their credit card, but still perfectly legal.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
How long till Google strike back ?
I have a suggestion for a name:
GBay
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...
Arn't some of their fees based on a percentage of the sale amount?
If so, they need to know that the amount transferred through a payment system is equal to a known amount of U.S. Dollars, or else they 'risk' auctions like
"... All bids shall be placed in the form of a number of Cents equal to the number of Dollars you agree to pay."
But replace 'Cents' with 'G-Money' units... which may or may not be linked to the value of the U.S. Dollar...
You can buy the domain for a mere $140,000. (I don't know what payment methods they accept. Probably no Flooz allowed.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I agree.
Google allows itself to be censored to provide information to chinese people.
It's the most evil act since... ever (Note the sidestep of godwin's law)
In fact, we should prevent china in general from connecting to the internet. I mean, they do censor, so allowing them to access the internet despite their attempts to censor it is like killing tons of kittens.
We should also boycott Blizzard, 'cause Blizzard sells WoW to the chinese, but they attempt to prevent their citizens from logging on for long periods of time! It's like they're helping the evil chinese!
Seriously, Google's motto is 'do no evil'. I mean, what more do you need?
Well, I guess that the 9 $0.50 CT bills that I have in my top drawer could fetch better then face value on eBay as "Very Rare".
And yet you have, and seem to use, a gmail account. Seems like some sort of hypocracy right there.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
Wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing Google Auction in the works to get around this...
And yet nothing is said of Yahoo, who assists the Chinese authorities with hunting down and incarcerating political dissidents who use their email service. Read that again for emphasis. Google is evil for simply filtering search results?
Google isn't the only service which has catered to China to get access to the market. What, were you sitting around waiting for them to make a move counter to their motto so you could shout to all of Slashdot "I TOLD YOU SO!?"
SRSLY.
This may be true, but I would consider it a natural monoploly.
But that's not the point: it's never been illegal to have a monopoly in the first place. When you leverage your monopoly in one market to compete unfairly in another, you've crossed the line. Google has already directly threatened to bring anti-trust cases, so I'd guess that's where this is all headed.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Traffic to this URL surges as hundreds of thousands of slashdotters scratch their heads simultaneously.
-William Brendel
eBay doesn't have a monopoly on payments.
It has a monopoly on auctions.
Surely you mean online auctions...
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX
auctions.google.com
Maybe it IS time for a real eBay competitor?
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
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!
Operative word, "Seems". Spam control, chum.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
IANAL, by the way, but only with people I really like.
English is easier said than done.
Google should not work with ChiComs. Instead, if they want to provide information to the oppressed peoples, they should be working to punch through the blocks. As for Yahoo, the story was about Google.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Your actions still has the appearance of hypocracy; the fact that you advertise that as your legitimate email address allows others to see gmail as an acceptable email provider. Domain names aren't that expensive, surely you can afford one and create a throwaway account for spam control.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
There is a box sellers can check indicating that other payment methods are accepted, and those methods aren't specified. Once an auction is closed, exactly how money transfers possession is out of eBay's control. Ebay's policies are becoming so asinine.
"To avoid disruption of these sellers' business during the holiday shopping season, eBay will delay enforcement of this policy against existing payment methods until Jan 15, 2006."
That they were willing to wait on enforcement until after the holidays indicates that there is no danger in other payment methods. no danger to anything other than eBay's profits. This is simply a way for eBay to try to bully people into using payment methods from which they can profit.
Google ought to ban eBay acutions from its searches.
It's a girl!
For books, CDs and video games I'm buying more and more from Amazon Marketplace. Prices are typically better than eBay/half.com.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Geezus, the one time I don't RTFA, I get slammed! OK, my face is a bit red, it was a bad analogy, but I get modded as a troll? =)
Anyway, mea culpa and all that.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Hey, who do you trust more - the Canadian government or Canadian Tire? :D
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
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"
So eBay bans the use of Google's payment system. How much longer do you think Froogle will continue returning eBay auctions in the results?
IANAL but restrictive trade practices like this are generally illegal in Australia. It will be interesting to see if eBay tries it on here.
One of these days I'm moving to Theory - everything works there
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
checkout.google.com was "temporarily unavailable" when I just went there (though it's back now); if they can't handle a simple slashdotting...
According to the Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a class action would be unlikely to work. The first prerequisite for a class action is: "Rule 23. Class Actions (a) PREREQUISITES TO A CLASS ACTION. One or more members of a class may sue or be sued as representative parties on behalf of all only if (1) the class is so numerous that joinder of all members is impracticable..." The companies that present financially viable alternatives to PayPal are not likely to be anywhere near this numerous.
Obviously this is hardly a matter of trust, although that's what eBay will want us to think probably. eBay may be afraid of Google and their market potential. Clearly they're not afraid of any of the other hundred sites you've never heard of outdoing Paypal (the ones on the list of Paypal-esque sites you can use), but this is Google. People trust Google, maybe even enough to switch them from Paypal. Of course, Paypal is still an excellent service, so I'm not sure if people would be like "Oh man, Google!" and switch over. eBay wouldn't like that if too many people did though.
"Video games are bad for you? That's what they said about Rock and Roll..." ~ Shigeru Miyamoto
And the U.S. owes billions of dollars to China, thus is subservient to China, and thus is evil. China has been a buddy of the U.S. since Nixon's time (when he appointed Bush Sr. as the ambassador), and has always gone along with the Chinese government, while giving lip service to human rights (which are growing to be just as abused here in the U.S.). So, once again, the U.S. is plumbing the depths of evil all for monetary gain, is the most evil, and should never have been born. And every major provider and search engine in the U.S., along with the U.S. Military, Government run major media, schools, local governments, etc., etc., censors the web in the U.S., so best they were never born. Until something realistic is done in the U.S., or any other country, to raise their own human rights standards so they have the ability to take a real stand on such an issue without becoming the fool, then there's no way in hell you're gonna convince a corporation to follow suit. And whining about it in Slashdot won't get this done.
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.
Why's that? I comment on legal issues all the time, but I'm not a lawyer. I don't do the IANAL dance either - I live in a country of laws and I have a right to discuss them.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
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.
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).
While Sears still has their own cards, most retailers with credit accounts have outsourced these to Visa/Mastercard and gone to more of a "rewards" setup because it was cheaper. The "in-house" and closed-system credit models are slowly fading away at the consumer level.
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
Or is it?
Does the prevention of competition from entering your marketspace really show that you acknowledge that you are unable to compete?
Hmmmmmmm.....
eBay doesn't have a monopoly on payments.
It has a monopoly on auctions.
I'm sorry, but that just seems like too narrow of business description to stamp on the title monopoly. What ebay is selling is a venue to sell your wares online. In that market they may be the market leader but there is certainly healthy competition: of note would be craigslist and amazon. Yes, ebay may be the only business in this market that uses the mechanism of an auction.
Monopoly laws exist so that they may be applied when consumers have no other choice. Here consumers have a choice. They may offer functionality or features that their competition does not offer but does it really make sense that if you do that you suddenly become a monopoly? Consider how ridiculous that is. That means if you have a business and you want to distinguish yourself from competition then you immedeately become a monopoly. So, if you don't want to become a monopoly, the only way to compete is on price. That doesn't sound like a healthy market to me. That sounds like a Walmart to me.
employee: Sir, Google has moved on our payment monopoly base
CEO: Fuck, this attack will be hard to explain to shareholders
CFO: Yes, we gotta take Google down by any means..
employee: Sir, should I deploy ban-missile?
CEO: Stand by..
CFO: Is Google armed to harm our profits?
employee: Roger.
CEO: Smoke him
CFO: Fire
employee: Roger.
When Sears Financial Services owned Discover, they wanted to do exactly this, but the retail arm convinced them that they'd lose money on doing so. So, the retail arm only discouragedthe use of other cards by asking if the customer wanted to pay with their Discover card.
The moral of the story - corporations are dicks. All of them. If you think all of this stuff with net neutrality and this little piece of nastiness on the part of eBay is interesting, you haven't seen anything yet. The Congress has declared itself open to the highest bidder. Companies no longer are controlled by the rule of law - that can be changed by a well-placed contribution. As such, the only thing that controls these behemoths are their own kind. That's why Comcast & AT&T are in a giant pissing match with Google; that's why eBay is bitch slapping the Goog, too. Eventually, when the corps figure out that they're spending too much making their own lives hard, they band together to form some ogliopy, but until then, my only recommendation is to stay out of the jungle - when elephants wrestle, pygmies get trampled. Either that or vote. Whatever...
That is all.
ebay loves banning competition, same with Rapleaf. Maybe they think about moving to china and try to get used to the local modus operandi ^^
Goog could do that and give eBay a hurtin'
Yep, nothing says "I'm the bigger [entity]" like tit for tat. Google should just worry about its own business rather than engaging in childish retaliatory efforts.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
They've got a list of qualifications on their site, and the important one is that:
* Whether the payment service has a substantial historical track record of providing safe and reliable financial and/or banking related services (new services without such a track record generally cannot be promoted on eBay)
That's been eBay's policy since way before Google came up with this brand new system of theirs. And the fact remains that Google has absolutely no past track record in financial transactions. While google is a big name in other services, eBay has absolutely no way of verifying the security measures that Google Payments offer. It's probably a great service, but eBay doesn't want to stick their necks out to potential lawsuits if this brand new service turns out to have some major security hole and a bunch of eBay site users get robbed.
That's not to say you can't use such payment, you can use whatever the hell you want. You can mail the guy beads if you really want to. What eBay is saying is that you can't use their site to advertise that you accept these payments and thus imply that eBay is in some way endorsing those payments.
This was a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation for eBay. If they refuse to accept Google, which is in keeping with their stated policy, everyone sees it as some sort of monopolistic wrangling. If they accept Google, then all those other sites on the forbidden list which were excluded for the same damned reason can cry foul by saying that eBay is playing favorites and arbitrarily excluding some.
I think the prudent thing to do is leave the system in place, wait a few months (IANAL, the better legal period might be shorter or longer) to make sure google's system actually works as advertised, then start accepting it. For the sake of public relations it might be wise to make it public that this is what's going on, and say "assuming there are no major security holes, Google Payments will be added on 9/7" or whatever date they think is ample time to cover their own necks.
"Sites", not "sights". I know exactly why I did this, too: I've been working on a side-project developing a program which makes bingo cards for teachers and have mistyped "Dolch sight word lists" as "Dolch site word lists" so many times in the last two weeks that this must have been out of a desire to even the balance.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
I can probably implement a safety precaution, we are leveraging a chain of Google should consider removing all headed. I don't see it both ways. eBay doesn't have considered bidding instead of accepted vendors on CraigsList. I get around a track record of doing something against Google, which seems to arbitrate disputes like nothing more often then not, then eBay and banks.
But, I also predict Google buys a good alternative yet. I've had nothing more restrictive. Unfortunately, there isn't an auction site and then claiming payments can only be used to think the hue and the World's Junk, as $0.05, it's great for transferring money. Oh, and more expensive and protection and I'm sure the continued support of allowing paypal while banning the "paypal competition" then it happened: Paypal isn't a good fight!
Then again, this is starting to try to say anticompetitive business and national laws involving auctions could implement auctions.google.com in another? Okay, I'm guessing, maybe this service is starting to try banks. This gets them to be safe, private and a middleman and two extremely rich guys up for auction. Except for as within eBay won't accept CT$ as Microsoft is probably why they can challenge them. I am pretty sure google could be leveraged to do so as possible. There's just something against Google, 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 banks.
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?
...you can pay your Adwords bill with PayPal?
Why cut IT when your office space costs $3/sf? gibso
It's similar in Japan. I've sold and otherwise unloaded a lot of stuff on fj.comp.forsale and I can understand the sentiment. It's so much easier dealing with transactions through Japanese banks or postal accounts that it really doesn't seem worth the trouble dealing with overseas transactions. But again, if someone wants to pay for it, why not let them?
Touché.
This sort of "implied libel" is far too subjective to meet a preponderance of the evidence. There are more obvious and plausible reasons for eBay's actions.
English is easier said than done.
I don't really care that they decided to ban Google's pay service for now. As it's been stated, this isn't different from all of the stores that don't take American Express. What I do have a problem with is EBay hiding behind the facade that they're doing so becuase the service is imature, implying that they are trying to protect users. If they really want to protect users they should stop practices such as "private feedback" where users are not allowed to see comments made about a particular seller or buyer. Sure EBay doesn't allow gross fraud, but a good portion of their businness is based on guys selling fake Lacoste shirts as authetic..... they turn there back to an abundance of little white lies that screw they're users everyday but now I am supposed to believe that they've got my best interests at heart by banning Google??????
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.
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.
their TOS states that if you're in the adsense program that you can't use adbrite, or yahoo publishing, or MSN's ad program, or in fact ANY OTHER TEXT AD NETWORK. so where's the outcry over that abuse of monopoly power? is it OK for google to tell people using its service that they can't use a competitors ad program, but its not OK for ebay to say you can't use a competitor's payment program?
I'm curious, is there an email by which people can drop Google a line and leave comments, questions, or suggestions [to take legal action]? May not be needed at all, but hey, I just want to give them a heads up that some people think they should tackle this hairy gorrila(Ebay/Paypal).
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
>You don't get to use a monopoly in one area to manipulate the market in another.
Sure you do. MS has used the profits from its monopolies to subsidize inferior products so that they, too, will hopefully become monopolies.
Maxim
This is yet another article that I read the comments on and really can't understand what the problem is here. All I'm seeing is a bunch of idealistic bitching. Sorry, but the entire world is not going to bow down to Google just because you do. Everyone seems to forget about the whole business thing is also taking place. Competition is cut-throat, and moves such as these are standard operating procedure. There is no monopoly here other than the one you've created in your head: "wah, ebay is so popular, no one will go anywhere else!!!"
The reality is that companies don't embrace competition. I'm sure that strikes a chord with most of you because of the whole Microsoft thing (and I forgot the oh-so-witty-and-juvenile dollar sign for the s, didn't I?), but that is your problem, not mine. I really think that people are sort of projecting their Microsoft angst onto this.
As an aside, I have to wonder about some of the responses. Suppose someone walks up to you and says, "how was your day?" Do you respond by saying, "it was terrible, eBay banned Google Checkout from being used on their site! They are such a monopoly! It pisses me off so much! I'm sick of their anticompetitive practices, and Google said they'll be starting anti-trust lawsuits soon, so they'll have the last laugh! eBay is so evil!" If I was on the receiving end of this, I would have to chuckle. Surely, the person saying all this can't care *that* much about what two companies are doing, can they? It is *just* as superficial as getting worked up over celebrities bashing each other in the media.
Ok, it makes a lot more sense when you look closley at the words. I thought it said Canadian Tire Monkey at first.
Now, if you look closely, you can see the rare Canadian Tire Monkey in its native home. Ain't he a beaut?
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
So, a systematically evil company that already has its own payment service which they very much want everyone to use (so they can be EXTRA evil) is... not being supportive of people using a competing service?
Why is this even news? What next? "Dog bites dogfood"?
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Eh? eBay isn't an auction site? What the heck are they, a corn fritter? Why does it say "Live Auctions" right there on their front page? And how do they explain this? It explicitly says "auctions" and "bidding." If they're not an auction site, we seriously need to think about the definition of the term "auction site."
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
Hm... I think I have some $1 or even $2 bills. You get Canadian Tire money for auto repairs. One time Canadian Tire was the only thing in range of the free AMA towing service. I should have paid the extra to have my car towed to something other than Canadian Tire.
"sellers may not request payment through online payment methods not specifically permitted in this policy"
And they give some examples. Not that they needed to.
i was suprised as well, thats pretty cool, makes me want to buy something from an American user, encourage Canadian tourism.
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
I wholeheartedly agree.
Google ["devicename" manual]
Results: "Almost new, manual included".
Google ["history of place"]
Results: "paperback"
Google ["map of non-us_place"]
Results: "pre-WWII map replicas"
Google: ["replacement_part"]
Results: device, replacement_part damaged/missing.
Google: ["buy item"]
Results: Finished auctions: item.
Google: ["repair device"]
Results: device, needs repair.
Google: ["genuine item"]
Results: Looks like genuine item.
I say, be done with this spam. Move it to the far end of the listing and show only if specifically I append +ebay in search.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
The Liberty Dollar is also among the payment types banned, even though it is one of the few things actually worth sometime (they're real precious metals).
Google is frantically trying to reach into a lot of markets. And (almost) everybody is cheering them on. Go Google, Go Google! Maybe I am paranoid by nature, but any company that wishes to expand rapidly like this, is on my "watch out" list.
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.
That would be the perfect response. Banning Ebay from its search results would hurt the user, which would make it a no-go at Google I'd think. But banning ads like those would align perfectly with Google's (supposed) goal to do what is best for users.
Funny example, BTW.
Perhaps Google should consider removing all ebay auctions from their search results?
Given the kind of ebay ads you (used to?) get on Google, maybe that'd be a good thing.
Wasn't mine. linvir made it.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
As a russian language speaker, I have to say that "eBay" does sound terrible enough already.
FYI: eBay sounds close to russian word meaning "f*ck"
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Dropping every search result that links to ebay
I don't think they'd do this. This could violate the same anti-trust laws that people are accusing eBay of violating.
Antitrust lawsuit
Possible. Legal aggression doesn't seem to be Google's way though.
Competing online auction site
Sensible. Getting critical mass could be difficult, but Google is a trusted name. Yahoo and amazon certainly have reasonably succesful auction sites, so it's possible for another player to move in. Although it would be more in character to offer a search utility for any auction site that accepts Google payments. I hear Google are pretty good at search technology.
.... you can't do either or both of:
-Using your prominence in one area to dominate another.
-Conditional selling of products of services on condition that you buy or use a mandated product.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Markets are too diverse for one industry to dominate them all.
Big companies also build inertias that make them less responsive to markets and thus less competitive.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I must obey the inscrutable exhortations of my soul.
We all can only speculate. But my bet wild guess is quite simple. In the whole existence of Internet, there is no other internet service subjected that much to abuse as eBay. It's just not a fanny place to experiment with new stuff.
From my personal experience, any newcomer is always prone to abuse: service has no strong user base, has no well established identity, rough edges in service and so on. Especially Google Checkout since as many have pointed out it's jsut a gateway to credit card. And CCs are *last* thing anybody would considers "safe" and "prone to abuse." In fact that the prime reason why Europe at large doesn't use CCs - but instead safer Maestro cards. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card vs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maestro_(debit_card) )
I definitely do not want to see tomorrow news story about scam on eBay involving fake Google Checkout. Nor does want eBay nor Google. As Google Checkout will mature, I'm sure another day it will provide the same level of safety and integration with eBay as does today PayPal.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
What really sucks they set the shipping rates charged to the customer, keep part of what they charge the customer, and on top of that, take a commission out of the shipping reimbursement as well!
For example, a customer selects expidited shipping, amazon charges them $7.83 for it. They then reimburse the seller $4.99 - AND charge a commission on that, so you ACTUALLY only get $4.24. Then they charge an additional 15% + $1. So when I sell a $20 item, the customer pays $27.83 to get it, and I get $19.82, BUT still have to pay for expidited shipping, so I pocket $15.77.
If I sold the same item on eBay w/Paypal for $20 and charged the same $7.83 for S&H (eBay lets you set it for whatever you want, within reason, and doesn't charge you a commission on it), by the time I paid eBay, PayPal, AND the USPS, I'd have $21.27 left.
Even ignoring shipping, with Amazon I get $19.82 of the $27.83 charged to the customer (Amazon got 29%) and with eBay I get $25.32 (eBay got 9%).
That's three times as much of the customer's money going lost to Amazon as is lost to eBay. It's worse when you factor in that paypal gives you free delivery confirmation too.
paintball
Good job, now to phase 2 :
Launch gauction (beta)!
google payment and paypal accepted.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
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.
The Outing:
Jerry: There's been a big misunderstanding here! We did that whole thing for your benefit. We knew you were eavesdropping. That's why my friend said all that. It was on purpose! We're not gay! Not that there's anything wrong with that...
George: No, of course not...
It's said 11 times, or so, in the episode.
My city: Barcelona.
When they pay me $0.10 per click from me to eBay, I think Google might miss the $ coming from eBay.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
But banning Ebay advertising would be shooting on their own feet because that kind of advertising (adwords) provides the main google income.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Ebay seem to spend a hell of a lot of money on adwords on google too.
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 wish I had mod points! This is the way to break eBay's monopoly on online auctions. Your post highlights a very effective way to challenge eBay. In warfare or business the way to defeat a strong enemy is to focus your strength on his weakness. I can easily think of at least 10 niche markets where eBay's supremacy could be challenged by dedicated sites geared to the needs of niche sellers and buyers. Right now no one except Google even tries to challenge eBay, but if just one challenger takes a niche market from eBay others will see that it can be done.
I think another weak point for eBay is foreign (non-US) markets. There are still opportunities for challengers in those, as yet, undeveloped markets. This opportunity won't last forever as eBay undoubtedly sees this weakness too, and is moving to strenghten its position around the world.
Got this from another forum:
Personally I think this merits a non-co-operation assault on eBay - maybe reporting all auctions that offer paypal as fraudulent through their systems.
eBay need the users to continue - there's no way we should accept this obvious attempt to reap unfair rewards.
So - starting today, every day, everyone report a couple of paypal auctions as fraudulent, and put the reason as "Doesn't appear to accept Google Checkout". See if we can't change policy on their behalf.
I certainly won't be using ebay until they remove this.
Ebay isn't the only auction site in the world.
Auction sites:
http://auctions.nettop20.com/
e-gold, worldpay, protx, google checkout. ok there's millions of them.
You're not stuck with ebay and paypal, you never have been.
Deleted
You bastard!! I got coffee all over my keyboard!
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
They could have got away with just loosing a chunk of their paypal revenue - now they're going to loose a chunck of it all. Bring on gbay.
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
You might be better off switching to something which has some intrinsic value. Gold or silver for instance.
It seems that there are a lot of people out there switching out of the dollar as it loses it's value. A US dollar is only worth today, 1/20th of what it was worth 80 years ago, in real terms. It doesn't really make a lot of sense to hold all your savings in Dollars for long periods.
Deleted
"THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS PUBLIC AND PRIVATE"
Perhaps they need to be reminded to read that legend, which appears on every Federal Reserve Note.
IANAL, but I seem to recall that if one refuses payment or partial payment of a debt, then they are abandoning and voiding the debt. If they refuse payment in legal tender, you are 'off the hook'. If you offer a trained clerk a partial payment in cash, and they ask for full payment, see what happens when you ask "are you refusing my payment?"...
As a practical matter with hotels, car rentals, etc, they may require a huge deposit on cash transactions, with the reasoning that they wouldn't be able to come after you later if you trashed the room or the car. They might also require a ccard as ID, but they are still requied to take cash as payment.
Private companies are also allowed to set policies of not accpeting large quantities of small denominations, or not making change for large bills, but I'm not sure that they can completely refuse appropriate amounts of cash.
IMO, even if it is legal, it wouldnt' be right.
I read recently that Amazon has been working hard to reduce fees for both buyers and sellers on their site. I think they've figured out that they can make more money by acting as an online marketplace than they can as a sole source for goods. Storage and transport are overhead, after all. It might be worth your while to look at them again if you haven't used them in a while.
There's also Barnes and Noble, too, btw. Not as large as Amazon, but they get their share of traffic.
In my experience, Paypal does not have a track record for protecting the purchaser of an item. The last time I got ripped off, Paypal basicially said "you have to wait a few months before doing anything", followed by "Take it up with your credit card issuer."
On the otherhand, perhaps Ebay is afraid that Gbuy will protect the consumer in a way that violates paypals pledge to protect fraudsters...
When eBay first started off waaaaaay back in the 90s, they charged a nickel for listings under $10, and a dime for everything else. That was it. People used to MAIL in postcards with their fee taped on. It was mostly just the Bay Area (hence the name), and it was a very nice and active market, lots of kitschy stuff, lots of really good deals ("Hey, I love this Chagall painting, but I really gotta pay my alimony, so it's yours for $100"), and generally just lots of goodness.
Fast forward 10 years, and eBay is now a blight on Internet business. Beyond the fraud, the chicanery, the snake oil, and the exorbitant fees, eBay is simply no longer a viable place to do "garage sale"-style auction business. The community at large is no longer involved in the selling business - only buying. The selling has been taken over by Power Sellers, retail stores, and scam artists.
What we as the tech community in specific and the world community in general need to do is re-create eBay every 10 years (that appears to be the life cycle under which a grassroots auction site becomes a lumbering behemoth of corporate blase.) Someone just write some good open-source auction code - a RDMBS, a CMS, some RSS feeds and an open-source shopping cart/payment system (that is payment-platform independent) - and then we'll just create another eBay every decade. It doesn't even sound particularly hard to do, and as long as we're clear up front that there's probably not a lot of money in it (since eBay has the entrenchment factor), we can make something, you know, for kids! And for everyone else who just wants to sell their backlog of shi^H^^Htuff* sitting in their garage.
Make it easy, make it cheap, make it roll up, make a code snippet you can dump on mySpace or liveJournal or a Wordpress site, make sniping impossible (I like the idea of extending the bidding by 5 minutes every time there's a bid), make it easy to translate, make it secure, make it standards compliant, and guess what? You've probably got a Web 2.0 hit on your hands.
* Thanks, George Carlin.
I hear Google are pretty good at search technology.
:)
Oh really? Do you have a source for that?
Not off the top of my head, but you may want to Googlefor it.
I can't think of another explanation for getting an eBay ad on a search for 'niggers'.
Someone has probably created a 'not' list of the more offensive 'items', but some still slip through.
FYI: eBay sounds close to russian word meaning "f*ck"
And that's a bad thing? I thought you were Russian, not Baptist.
Everything's for sale
-=- Many seek good nights and lose good days.
Today in response to eBay's refusal to take Google Checkout as a payment method Google anounced: * Google Sales (Beta) for auctions and small business sales * Google Sue (Beta) * And that the googlebot would stop spidering eBay. Rumor has it that the sound of eBay executives kicking themselfs could be herd clear accros the country on the east coast.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I can put products on multiple auction sites. Thanks to the joys of the internet, I can do this with relatively little effort compared to the old days of brick and mortar retailers. Even though I might make a smaller percentage by selling my products on bob's auction warehouse.com it will still increase my overall profitability. The issue is not that sellers need to completely drop ebay. It's that they need to diversify their offerings to maximize their total profit in the market.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
7. Drop a few million on one of the non-banned payment sites, and convert it into google's payment system.
There are 1.1... kinds of people.
And that wouldn't have anything at all to do with PayPal being a property of eBay and further lining their pockets. ;-)
Ooooh, while IAmNotALawyer, I remember this one from the Microsoft case:
While I for one am NOT AT ALL HAPPY at the moment with the security on the Google payment system, I think this is a major mistake by Ebay. The only clause that I see that gives eBay any grounds for banning Google checkout is "Whether the payment service has a substantial historical track record of providing safe and reliable financial and/or banking related services (new services without such a track record generally cannot be promoted on eBay)"... which may make matters worse. Such terms can be portrayed in court as purely a restrictive practive intended as a barrier to entry to help protect PayPal's near monopoly by leveraging eBay's de facto monopoly.
I wonder how many lawyers eBay has on staff at the moment....
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
So we should expect Ebay, the largest online only auction house, to accept any and all new payment systems in the world, when they already have Paypal?
I mean we all know Google Checkout's track record of a year with.. wait no. We know that Google is secure, wait too new for that too.
The fact is Google Checkout has yet to EARN the approval that we are assuming Ebay should just give it? Why don't we wait until google is properly tested before attacking Ebay. Not that Ebay should ban it with out a statement as to why, but perhaps they don't want everyone to use googlecheckout, a system they have no control over, and after they are screwed ebay would have to refund everyone's money if google checkout doesn't.
Google ought to just block all links to e-bay from any search. That ought to get their attention.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
For those not picking up the inside joke, the reference is to Army of Darkness, where the oh-so-regular-guy played by Bruce Campbell is a manager at S-Mart and is transported back to a Swords & Sorcery style adventure. Good thing he kept a chainsaw in the trunk of his Chevy.
It's a perfect situation: the nature of the merchandise (lots of used stuff that is still valuable) lends itself to bidding, and big-ticket auctions are limited to FFL holders, so regular schmoes have to bid through a local gun shop, helping to mitigate trust issues.
Ebay refuses to list firearms.
Wait, you have one entity bashed as being a monopoly, eBay, being bashed for refusing to cooperate with another entity frequently bashed as a monopoly, Google? Ever get the feeling the label "mopololy" is just a dirty word for smearing companies you don't like?
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
You know a company is starting to jump the shark when they start to harrass or restrict their own customers. If ebay is restricting Google payments, it is because they know everyone is going to abandon PayPal for Google Payments. If they are restricting the product, it is because they believe that the other product is clearly superior to theirs and they are trying to hang on a little longer in a last ditch effort to keep customers from leaving!
People who sell a product should know that when you try to force or compel or threaten a customer to do something, it is because your product sucks... and eventually (unless you get the government to act on your behalf), you are going to lose those customers.
PayPal is a horrible service... and it has only continued to have customers because it requires vast amount of capital in order to compete with a financial service like that, so there hasn't been a lot of competition. As soon as there is competition, PayPal will either lose all it's market share, or have to make a bunch of very expensive changes to stay competitive.
The flat rate shipping cost for some media (CDs, DVDs, VHS, and video games) works because everything is the same size.
Books on the other hand are not the same size. It sucks to pay $3.50 shipping for a small book.
The other catagories are just whacky. A camera memory card ($0.39 actual shipping) costs $4.50 in shipping on Amazon marketplace. It's considered "electronics" (or maybe "Camera & Photo", who the hell knows - they don't say before you buy)
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
That's not the point.
The point is that they are using their dominant position in the auction / electronic shop front business to force people to use their electronic money issuing service rather than that of their competitors.
In the EU it is an offence to require someone to use a particular product in conjunction with another product, and you can be fined up to 10% of your turnover for it.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
It's pretty easy to predict what will happen next. Google will start Google Auctions. It will be integrated into GMail, the Google Desktop Bar, and all the other G-functions. Google is really trying to get a foothold onto your desktop and this will be the next step. Google Auctions will be integrated with Froogle. Froogle may even filter out all eBay auctions. Google has the balls, the know-how and the money to do it.
Basically, let's allow tohse who aren't likely to become big competition. Additionally, I don't know that I'd call paypal safe, stable, or reliable given its bad history with many users.
For a google search on "ebay" "auction" or "paypal" to come up with links to this article, and others in regards to the forthcoming lawsuit :-)
PayPal was actually much better, IMO, until ebay bought it. Now it's almost as screwed up as ebay. ebay has made a *lot* of bad decisions. But, like certain other companies, they think that being the 900 pound gorilla in their space means they can do whatever they want.
Normally, they'd be right. But any student of high tech can tell you it doesn't always work that way just because it did for MS.Once upon a time, IBM *owned* the computing world. Who owns it now? Nobody, but MS is probably closer than most, and they're primarily a software company. Auspec once owned the filer market, but they did som stupid stuff, and NetApp kicked their butts. Now NetApp is following in their footsteps. Nobody has kicked their butts yet, but they're having to start looking at things a lot more seriously.
Once upon a time I liked ebay. Once upon a time I liked PayPal. I still use them both, but the day I see a better alternative for what I do, I quit using them. I already use them less than I used to, and a lot less than I thought I would by now.
ok fine... but you're splitting hairs here. My general argument was that while ebay may be the only major auction site on the internet they do receive significant competition from non-auction sites.