Live data from Hacker News

Buy on Google is now open and commission-free

blog.google

31–40 of 257 posts

Re: Buy on Google is now open and commission-free

#31
post #9

So many questions... the big one: How does Google make money from this?

They can collect the data as usual, and they will, but for once they would not even need to. They can just wait until no shop can make a living without it because they dominate the market. They they start charging.

Re: Buy on Google is now open and commission-free

#33

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 204 times, shame on me. https://killedbygoogle.com/

"companies don't try new things" - HN

"Google kills products" - HN

99% of the people here would gladly work at Google. But what's the next best thing .. downplay the company you couldn't get into :) Carry on !

Re: Buy on Google is now open and commission-free

#34
post #27

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 204 times, shame on me. https://killedbygoogle.com/

Slashdot.org was plagued by people posting "first post" to every story, so they implemented an automatic "first post" comment to each article, that was removed as soon as other comments appeared. Maybe this comment ("Google will shut this down like so many other products") should be similarly posted automatically to Hacker News on every Google story?

It's ironic how my least favorite genre of posts are posts that complain about other posts.

Re: Buy on Google is now open and commission-free

#35

Free until they dominate the entire market

You really think Google -- who has floundered in this space for years -- is going to dominate a market that is already dominated by a company (Amazon) with a 50% larger market cap? Walmart and Target have been trying to chip away at Amazon's lead, and they're only getting buried deeper in the dust. Google doesn't exactly have a reputation for entering new markets and dominating them, either...

>Google doesn't exactly have a reputation for entering new markets and dominating them, either...

Mobile OS's (Android)

Online Video (Youtube)

Online Maps (Google Maps)

Webmail (Gmail)

None recently, granted.

Re: Buy on Google is now open and commission-free

#36

Free until they dominate the entire market

You really think Google -- who has floundered in this space for years -- is going to dominate a market that is already dominated by a company (Amazon) with a 50% larger market cap? Walmart and Target have been trying to chip away at Amazon's lead, and they're only getting buried deeper in the dust. Google doesn't exactly have a reputation for entering new markets and dominating them, either...

People don't search things on amazon, they search things on google, which link to amazon.

So yes, they have a huge potential.

They always have sucked doing things IRL, so it's not a certain win. But owning the road to the competition shop is powerful.

Not to mention they can force the hand of small shops: use our API or go down in ranking.

Re: Buy on Google is now open and commission-free

#37

Free until they dominate the entire market

Or wipe out the low commission fee competition in the payment processor space. If the US had better anti-competitive enforcement I feel like this is akin to the Internet Explorer/Netscape/Microsoft case, in them using one monopoly (search) to take over another market (same hook too: "free"). Plus you know they're going to reward sites for using this in their search rankings (or just outright place them at the top).

Love how baseless allegations like "reward in search rankings" are heeded here. If I write something egregious without a source against Duck Duck Go I'd be downvoted to oblivion

Re: Buy on Google is now open and commission-free

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At first, me too. But amazon doesn't have a search monopoly, millions of android devices, google maps, or youtube to drive the sales. Neither do they have the huge amount of data google already have on people. Now there is a possibility that google fails because sales require a lot of IRL stuff they suck at. So maybe it will be a balanced game. But if they win, it's going to be a nightmare. Unrelated, but I'm also qu…

> But amazon doesn't have a search monopoly, millions of android devices, google maps, or youtube to drive the sales. Don't forget that something like ~70% of their income comes from AWS. They may not be as visible as Google on the net but they are pretty much the largest provider of web services.

Sure but they make this money in B2B, not using customers data.

Re: Buy on Google is now open and commission-free

#40
post #14

This is 'The Anti-Amazon Alliance' as Ben Thompson puts it. Curious to see if customers will adopt it. I think it lacks two key value props of Amazon: uniform guarantees (Amazon guarantees regardless of seller) and super fast shipping.

Of you are big enough, you want to be present on all large trading venues, say, both Amazon and eBay.

If this venue proves reasonably well functioning and promoted, big sellers will have to build their presence there, too, bringing in customers and more credibility.

Post reply on HN