Google Checkout worth checking outdevelopers, customer adventures, finance — by TDavid @ 1:07 pm PST
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The service many, myself included, have been calling GBuy is now live as Google Checkout. It’s pretty much what Google had said it was all along while the hype machine kept referring to it as a ‘PayPal killer.’ It’s an e-wallet, writes Chris Garrett:
it is a desperate attempt to get more Adwords dollars through their door by targeting small merchants with a cut-down merchant service and the lure of free credit card transactions. For the consumer it is a circa 1998 “e-wallet”. So why are people saying this is a “paypal killer”?
Buyers
The draw for the buyer is using one place to manage all your purchases across a wide variety of vendors. There is also the security element in that you aren’t sharing your credit card details with a bunch of different vendors. Downside here is how many will accept Google Checkout? In the beginning there are actually a decent number of vendors that accept Google Checkout. Just be on the lookout for the Google Checkout icon: 
The Google Checkout “buyer” Terms of Service is here. After agreeing to the terms of service (checking the box), entering your Google account information or logging in, adding your credit number, then you are able to go shopping. There are a wide selection of vendors using Google Checkout already available.
Sellers
For businesses you can allow Google Checkout as another form of payment. This might be the only similarity to PayPal: as a convenience and security consideration for buyers.
Transaction Fees
The Why Google Checkout? page provides details on how transaction fees will work with a curious tie-in to Google Adwords advertising:
For every $1 you spend on AdWords, you can process $10 in sales for free through Google Checkout. For example, if you spent $1,000 on AdWords last month, this month you can process $10,000 in sales at no cost. The more you spend to promote your business through AdWords, the more you save on transaction processing fees with Google Checkout.If you exceed your free transaction processing for the month, or you don’t advertise with AdWords at all, you’ll only be charged 2% plus $.20 per transaction.
2% + .20 per transaction works out to:
*$1 item(s): $0.78 to you, $0.22 to Google (total fees: 22%)
*$5 item(s): $4.70 to you, $0.30 to Google (total fees: 6%)
$10 item(s): $9.60 to you, $0.40 to Google (total fees: 4%)
$100 item(s) = $97.80 to you, $2.20 to Google (total fees: 2.2%)
$1,000 item(s) = $979.80 to you, $20.20 to Google (total fees: 2.02%)
*not a very good solution for Micropayments, especially on the side of $1. It gets better percentage-wise as more money is spent. $5 is
Using the Checkout system for multiple items will save on multiple transaction fees.
How to be a Google Checkout seller
To be a seller you must provide your FEIN number or Social Security Number, bank account information, return and shipping policy. Integrating a Google Checkout Buy It Now button is as easy as copy/pasting HTML, see the Developer Center. If you want to integrate with the checkout system then you need to program it yourself using the API, modify the provided sample code, or use one of the checkout software solutions from Google’s e-partners: ChannelAdvisor, Infopia, Mercantec, Monster Commerce, Shopsite, Volusion
Google Checkout API includes sample code in Java, PHP and ASP (COM)
Signing up as both a buyer and seller took less than 10 minutes. It took me longer to write this post and take the screenshots. As for running out test transactions as both a buyer and seller I will be testing that in the coming days.
Others are saying
Don Dodge continues the overhype and FUD: “Credit card companies better look out…Google is coming. PayPal should be worried too.”
Techeffect: “On the positive side for consumers, Google isn’t demanding an exclusive relationship for sellers who use both AdSense and Google Checkout. PayPal and Google Checkout can be offfered side by side.”
Jeremy has no Google Checkout envy: “Google’s a leech. An innovative leech, but a leech nonetheless. They can’t lead. They can’t develop software that gets mass appeal. And they can’t even innovate beyond their first core of ideas that are more than a decade old.”
TechCrunch: “I’m not sure how much I trust Google at all and I’d need a more compelling feature set in order to give them this information (I use GMail because it’s a great system). I hope that stores will offer both PayPal and Google Checkout services, though it seems very unlikely.”
David Hunter: “Also notice that Google Checkout is not a beta, but has been fully launched and is ready to rock and roll although admittedly it’s version 1.0 with all that implies.”
Search Engine Watch: “very favorable rates compared with PayPal’s 30 cents and 2.9% fees (PayPal’s fees scale lower with higher-cost transactions)”
Jimmy Daniels at Revenews: “we all know part of Googles ranking is based on the number of clicks, surely if this catches on with users it will give those ads an advantage over those that do not display the checkout icon.”
My thoughts
As I say with most Google services, I prefer to actually use them for real world scenarios before passing too much judgement but my initial impression is positive. I don’t see this yet as doom and gloom for anybody, including PayPal, but it is possible if Google gets big enough they could create their own finance department. I’m not sure they want to be a bank though. Maybe.
For buyers, the only bad thing I can see is concerns over possible transaction privacy. Will Google use our buying history to show us more targeted ads? Amazon is the king at this strategy, so it wouldn’t surprise me but I can see some people being worried. If Amazon or Google or any company I do business with can present me with products/services I might like to buy and they aren’t in my face about it, then I’m at least somewhat interested.
On the seller end, I think their fee structure is reasonable and fair and I like the idea of getting a break on fees for advertising on Adwords. As to the API and checkout implementation, I will post separately about that experience. Do I think it’s good that they got into this market? Yes.
Update 11:41am PST Google video explaining the service below, thanks Google Blog which ends with a description of Google Checkout: “makes buying online safer, faster and a whole more fun.”
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- eBay starts Prostores website hosting
- Legal online music sales PayPal fees reduced, any takers?
- Using the PayPal security key
- Why is eBay unwilling to offer Google Checkout?
- eBay slows, PayPal grows
Interesting. I’m still in wait-and-see mode.
Comment by Sterling Camden — June 29, 2006 @ 2:51 pm PST
[…] Make You Go Hmm - Google Checkout worth checking out “For buyers, the only bad thing I can see is concerns over possible transaction privacy. Will Google use our buying history to show us more targeted ads? Amazon is the king at this strategy, so it wouldn’t surprise me but I can see some people being worried.” […]
Pingback by Next Generation Shopping » Blog Archive » Google Checkout: Blogosphere Fever and Top 10 Posts Roundup — June 29, 2006 @ 4:32 pm PST
I gave it a serious whirl, but when I couldn’t get a single site to let me buy I gave up.
Comment by Jeremy Wright — June 29, 2006 @ 5:14 pm PST
I imagine like most Google services, Jeremy, that they are having their day one scaling issues. This isn’t being released as beta though so that’s disturbing. Kind of scary for vendors who might offer that as the only payment option, but I bet very few will do that even after the dust clears. Most that are interested will most likely just add it as another possible choice.
Has anybody checked out Google Base integration with Checkout yet? I looked earlier and didn’t see a spot yet to choose Checkout with Base which seems like a natural fit.
Comment by TDavid — June 29, 2006 @ 5:40 pm PST
TDavid, if this was marked beta, I wouldn’t be complaining. But it’s not, hence I feel pretty justified
This is, after all, a banking-level transaction and system.
Comment by Jeremy Wright — June 29, 2006 @ 5:42 pm PST
Jeremy you’ve been fairly critical of Google whether they were beta or not, yes/no? Forgive me for being a bit skeptical that you wouldn’t be hammering them if this wasn’t beta. Regardless of whether your would or not, your point — and other prospective customers trying to use Checkout and getting errors — is valid.
As I said in comment #4, it’s “disturbing.” I haven’t tried any transactions yet, but will be once I get caught up here (over 600 posts to plow through, yowsa). I guess I’m learning to wait a couple days for the “it’s new” crowd to drop in and leave before trying out and seriously evaluating new Google services. It has becom badly cliched — and too easy, frankly — to bash Google on launch days. I’d rather wait and see if there is some real usefulness in the days that follow and report back findings then.
And not being a Google apologist here (although I probably sound that way), but every third party processor we’ve ever tried/used in our business since 1996 has had problems of some sort, including PayPal.
Comment by TDavid — June 29, 2006 @ 6:06 pm PST
I spent years praising Google. Now I’m more critical of the apologists than of Google themselves. Both my posts on this didn’t say anything negative about Checkout actually, because besides my issue, there wasn’t anything negative to say.
On the positive side, signup was so simple I nearly did a double-take
Comment by Jeremy Wright — June 29, 2006 @ 6:16 pm PST
Noticed that the signup went right to the credit card form which might freak out some buyers who might want to be convinced and tour-schmoozed why they should signup. I’ve seen a few complaints about that.
I definitely like the fee structure. 2%/.20 is better than Paypal for smaller transactions. But still what about micropayments? Google has no answer for that yet, not with the current incarnation of Checkout. Microsoft could jump in that niche with the Xbox Marketplace, but they seem to be in some weird, inexplicable holding pattern (why???). Google gains while Microsoft lumbers along and meanwhile Yahoo jumps into just about everything and gets little fanfare for the effort.
Comment by TDavid — June 29, 2006 @ 6:42 pm PST
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Pingback by Make You Go Hmm: » Hmmcast #14: back channels, SL, climate, PC inventory — June 30, 2006 @ 8:02 pm PST
I checked out “Google-checkout”.
The overall process seems to be very easy but exactly that makes this solution very vulnerable. During checkout there was no security question to make sure that I’m indeed the owner of the Google account or the associated Credit Cards in that account. Of course I used my username and password but because there are so many Google sites, using the same username and password, it is very easy to loose your login information on a hijacking page as you might not check the url for Ad-Words or Gmail every time you log on as those services never had the possibility to shop with your Credit Card.
Now because you have one account and login information for all it is quite possible that hackers will try to get your login information from any Google service out there! Even worth is the fact that the hacker can change the password without any problem. The owner of the account might not even get any information about the password change as the e-mail is sent to the according and hijacked Gmail account.
Because of this HUGE security risk I would not recommend using Google checkout!
Please checkout the thebilliondollarpatent.com as s-registration solution that Google should have implemented in their service to make it solid and secure. This solution is requiring a third credential called TAN to make sure that ONLY the owner of that account is able to shop online even in case the account is hijacked.
I hope that everybody is aware of the security issue with Google checkout and will inform Google of a better solution!
Thanks and be safe;-)))!!
Comment by Erdbeere — July 23, 2006 @ 10:35 pm PST
Erdbeere - without linking to your sites/pages, add some value here and tell us what makes using your service more beneficial?
Comment by TDavid — July 24, 2006 @ 10:48 am PST
[…] The first time I mentioned Google Checkout Jeremy Wright tried buying something and only met with frustration. […]
Pingback by Make You Go Hmm: » Today only some green from your wallet for a Google Checkout T-shirt — August 10, 2006 @ 10:57 am PST
thebilliondollarpatent.com sounds like billiondolllarscam lol it sounds like you have to buy it or is it similiar to paypal and googlecheckout, I didn’t see any fee structure just a lot of BS about how they guy got the idea, I won’t be using them anytime soon
Comment by mushu — August 12, 2006 @ 6:43 pm PST