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Google Broke Up a Vietnamese Con Scheme After an Employee Was Scammed Buying a Bluetooth Headset (cnbc.com)
A Google executive found a high-end Bluetooth headset selling at a steep discount on Google Shopping website earlier this year. He placed the order, but much to his surprise, the headset never arrived at his doorstep. He tried calling the seller, but it turned out that the number listed on the website was disconnected, and the merchant wasn't based in the US, as the website had indicated. Instead of kicking the seller off the website, Google launched an investigation and it soon realized the problem ran too deep. From a report: But instead of simply banning the bad actor from listing new products, Google Shopping's trust and safety team initiated a global probe that ultimately tracked down 5,000 merchant accounts wrapped up in a sophisticated scheme to defraud users. "I think we caught them right at the tip of when they were trying to scale up," Saikat Mitra, Google Shopping's director of trust and safety, told CNBC. The story, which Mitra is sharing publicly for the first time, reflects Google's never-ending battle against scams, a fight that requires engineers and their increasingly sophisticated machine learning tools.
It also illustrates the risks that consumers face as Google aggressively tries to win back product searches from Amazon and stay relevant in the future of e-commerce. Although Google Shopping may look like a marketplace, it really isn't. Amazon and eBay operate shopping platforms that connect sellers with buyers and offer protections like money-back guarantees. Google, by contrast, sends shoppers off its site after they click on an item, and thus has no visibility into what happens after the transaction.
It also illustrates the risks that consumers face as Google aggressively tries to win back product searches from Amazon and stay relevant in the future of e-commerce. Although Google Shopping may look like a marketplace, it really isn't. Amazon and eBay operate shopping platforms that connect sellers with buyers and offer protections like money-back guarantees. Google, by contrast, sends shoppers off its site after they click on an item, and thus has no visibility into what happens after the transaction.
A Google executive...
If that to you or I - peasants - we'd be given the run around and basically told to "suck it".
After years of scam, google exec had to get scammed to start any investigation. Who cares about 100.000 complains they received earlier...
I got scammed!
Google: Too bad.
Google Exec:
I got scammed!
Google: Let's find the scum and make a press release of how much good we're doing!
Does it really trick anybody?
I use it specifically because it is a search engine.
It aggregates many stores, and pretty clearly links to them.
Similar to its flight search.
It is specifically because it is a search engine and not a marketplace that I find it so useful.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
I'm trying to figure out why a hyper-rich guy is not only shopping for a bit of electronics himself, but spending time hunting for bargains like a regular broke-ass millennial. Is it some multimillion-dollar headset made from some endangered tree's wood treated with war orphans' tears?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
> I'm trying to figure out why a hyper-rich guy is not only shopping for a bit of electronics himself, but spending time hunting for bargains like a regular broke-ass millennial.
If he is a young exec, chances are that he was a thrifty grad student not too long ago. Most people's spending habits and general behaviors don't automatically get rewired the moment they get a larger pay check.
I still peek at the same deal sites as I did 15 years ago, often just by habit. My income certainly changed a lot in the meantime.
Amazon and eBay operate shopping platforms that connect sellers with buyers and offer protections like money-back guarantees. Google, by contrast, sends shoppers off its site after they click on an item, and thus has no visibility into what happens after the transaction.
Actually...Google has started to roll out where you buy things without leaving Google. It's still just rolling out, but I've seen it every once in a while. I've seen it show up a couple times (ironically on stuff I wasn't trying to buy) and have backend knowledge of it happening from a sales side of things. Kind of nifty the way it works, but I doubt that it'll ever catch Amazon. The end user is told that their product is being fulfilled by [insert merchant here] and they never leave the Google page.
And no, I do not work for Google. I work for a company that has partnered with Google on this particular topic.
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
It is a slashdot thing; it deletes key words, or changes positive statements to negatives, to punish people who don't use "preview." It rewrites your comment when you press preview, you're not previewing just to check for your own mistakes, you have to proof read for the added mistakes too.