Back to the important news: eBay bans Google Checkout

by on July 6, 2006

Oh, talking about Rocketboom’s “unbooming” was so much fun, but, let’s be honest, whatever happens to that video show won’t effect our lives as much as the decisions being made inside the corporate offices of eBay today.

  • Tim Courtney
    Can we say 'anti-competitive?' Totally obvious they're sheltering PayPal.
  • Sarah
    wow. things are going to get interesting
  • brad
    Looks like the big story of the week might end up being Podshow.
  • Hey Scoble, why don't you take your new camera and interview eBay about this decision?
    C
  • When a company is confident in its products they can embrace competition, knowing (or at least expecting) that they will outrun them and eventually control the market. Companies with weak products, or in the case of eBay, faltering user satisfaction numbers turn tail and run for the walled city to prepare for siege. eBay has every reason to believe that Google is going to eat their lunch (or have them for lunch) and it looks to me that they don't have a clue what to do about it. Sort of reminds me of a certain software company. Of course I don't think Google is out to put any company out of business. They have a scatter-shot approach that lets their developers (so far) go where they will and lets the market select the winners and losers from their offerings. They can't keep this up forever, but they aren't out of gas yet, so eBay has reason to worry, and with the deck chair reshuffling of management, purchase of Skype and this little maneuver, stockholders are going to wonder why is this company hunkering down so, and do I want my money hunkering down with them. Well I think the latest Wall Street numbers answer that last question.
  • Interesting Read here:

    http://xpaypal.blogspot.com/2006/06/5-reasons-w...

    While I don't agree with all of his points, it does seem to me that Paypal is much better suited for eBay auctions. The Fraud point is the strongest of all 5, IMHO.
  • Robert,
    I have to side with eBay on this one. Google Checkout is new-ish. If it can be gamed anyway/how like Google News was I feel bad for the poor soul who's credit card information in Google Checkout gets indexed by Googles search engine and shows up as a result when you search for that persons name...

    Point is...Paypal has their reasons for sure.
  • Shawnsblog: Wasn't Paypal "new-ish" a while back too and did eBay ban them for being the new kid on the blog? And hasn't Paypal had its share of problems as well. You act like it's never been "gamed" before.
  • Ah, but aren't you changing jobs on a hedge that would say the "unbooming" will greatly impact our lives? You switched jobs to use podcasting to change the world, there is definitely the 'potential' that this "unbooming" could have a significant impact on podcasting and hence (in your hedge) the world. Where the two go from here could greatly impact the future of podcasting and if they fail the group that fills the vacuum will have another "first mover advantage" of at least directing where the market will go.
  • ebay owns paypal. It's normal business practice.
  • How long until we see Google Auctions then?
  • Moe
    Google Checkout like many other google services is in beta. Maybe they should take it out of beta and then it may have a chance.
  • James Halpern
    Does Google allow advertisers to use PayPal to pay for their ads?

    http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/...
  • Google will come up with something better than Ebay. We will think of Ebay in times as we think of Mapquest.

    Phil
  • realestateceo: Mapquest still has more than twice the marketshare of anything Google has. If Mapquest is a failure, I think I want a failure too!
  • Nab
    PayPal is not very nimble or responsive -- a lot of customers are somewhat unhappy with it. It really needs some competition. But what I really want is a micro-payments systems where where I can get a penny here and give a dime there without a 20 cent fee. Google's not offering that -- yet.
  • I had a good experience using Google Checkout. On the other hand, it is relatively untested, so it is possible that ebay is genuinely concerned about it's newness. http://blog.tokash.org/2006/06/29/buying-horton...
  • Greetings,
    I used to work for PayPal. I was with them for 2.5 years, and I can say for reasonably certain that this is an understandable move *for their userbase* on eBay's part.

    Put simply, if Western Union, CitiBank, and a dozen other companies couldn't figure out the fraud issue as well as PayPal did, and weren't willing to take the heat to fight crime like PayPal did (and there was HEAT from the users who got caught in the crossfire), what makes anyone think that Google, a company without ANY of the expertise, can make headway against the perpetual fraudsters? Google hasn't been transacting in hard cash before, it's all been in multiple layers removed. Now, with cash on the line, the really smart criminals step up.

    If Google Checkout manages to survive a few years and show a
  • ...continued due to < confusion...

    If Google Checkout manages to survive a few years and show a <1.5% fraud rate like PayPal does (actually <0.5% last I remember, but 1.5% is the industry norm(!)), then maybe it's something that eBay will open up to. They DO do what their users demand, eventually.

    For what it's worth, eBay never banned PayPal because PayPal was too big too fast on their site. By the time they had an inside alternative, PayPal already had pwned their userbase. ;) So they bought us.
  • Greetings,
    Huh! Following some of the links, I need to note, I'm *not* X-PayPal (I'm not anonymous). Similar thinking, though.

    We (and I mean ex-PayPalians) will be shocked, and I really mean *SHOCKED* if Google can come even close to the fraud management developed at PayPal. Nobody else did, and that's why PayPal was the sole survivor of the payment wars.

    Still, Google has the really smart people and a few dozen million dollars to lose in learning (and pissing off customers while they learn), so who knows... I just wouldn't trust it until they have learned.
  • Arejay
    Has anyone come up against eBay’s reserve price trigger? If you place a bid ‘out in front’ of the current bid on an item, hoping to work towards that figure, and somehow by chance your maximum hits the hidden reserve of he seller, your bid will jump to that figure. I got caught. I wonder how many other new players have been caught out as well. It’s almost as if in a live auction the auctioneer looks around an auction room and instead of taking notice of the bids, starts reading the the minds of those present, calling out the maximum people could be prepared to pay right at the outset. Imagine the chaos.

    When I tried to get some sense from the ebay.co.uk query staff on why maximum bids are triggered by reserves in this way (when you can find out to contact them) they gave me the polite stonewall ‘we are not going to answer this’ treatment. Is eBay another form of pyramid selling, a trap for the unwary?
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