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Google Pay app will no longer be available

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Re: Google Pay app will no longer be available

#91

Post by throw_this_1234 »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #52
dcchambers wrote: post #15

Google's history with their payment apps/platform is almost as convoluted as their history with message apps/platforms. I swear they have gone back and forth on Android Pay/Google Wallet/Google Pay a half dozen times.

I forgot where it was mentioned [1] that the mess comes from a poor management of international feature list. In particular, Google wanted it to be successful in India. But the prior app was designed with USA sensibilities and requirements. Such as, oh, requiring an email and Google account! The thought was that this wouldn't fly in India, and it had to work with just a phone number. I'm sure there were perverse/cros…

Requiring a Google account would indeed not fly. The project was called next billion users and it's objective was to seek internet penetration into areas of India where internet literacy is nonexistent.

As a part of that initiative you had manufacturers building super low-cost Android smartphones that came preloaded with Google apps and people could put a SIM card in. The backing system of GPay in India called UPI works similarly so this app could never have that second layer of auth as a mandatory wrapper and spread where Google wanted it to spread.

Those decisions gave them 200M users on the app in the country.

Re: Google Pay app will no longer be available

#92

Post by dcchambers »

bsimpson wrote: post #87
refulgentis wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked on Pixel for several years and used to excuse this stuff. Now, among other things, every time I need to open the app, I inevitably search for Google Pay instead of Wallet. Maybe I'll remember now that this happened. Android Pay -> Google Pay seemed fair, but IIRC, Google Pay -> Google Wallet was just a combo of shipping-the-org-chart and Apple me-too'ing. At the time, they were also leaking that there was go…

It's so sad when Android invents something truly useful and then abandons it, only to find Apple doing it a few years later. The first culprit that comes to mind is swipe to the camera on the lockscreen - useful, but not Apple enough, so they delete it. Then, Apple ships it, but Google already deleted it.

Wireless charging, face unlock, a bump-style sharing system, NFC, etc. Android did so much first, abandoned it after a year or two, only to see Apple introduce it as revolutionary.

Re: Google Pay app will no longer be available

#93

Post by googlethrow11 »

pjmlp wrote: post #84
googlethrow11 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the misfortune of working on this garbage of a project. One of the most pathetic software projects with some of the worse people I have ever worked in my life. Google Pay India is very successful. Not because it is actually good but rather the fact that it does not face the pressure to be very profitable unlike its competitors like PayTM (which now is pretty much dead). It is a good product with basic feature t…

Looks like the typical offshoring development experience to me, thanks for sharing your history.

You have misunderstood.

There is no "offshore" involved. Google Pay India's team was primarily based on Singapore (and some India) working for Google Singapore and Google India. Google US app's team was spread all around the world but mostly USA and Singapore.

Re: Google Pay app will no longer be available

#94

Post by googlethrow11 »

altairprime wrote: post #79

June 4th is an odd shutdown date, and it makes no sense that they’d terminate offers early. I suspect external pressures exist here. The shutdown date assigned is precisely 16 weeks and 2 business days following the court decision on February 9th that CPRA is now active in California: https://www.foley.com/insights/publications/2024/02/ca-appel... While this could be merely a coincidence, given that the US app offers…

Lol. You have no idea how Google functions. They can not make this decision in days. The shutdown was planned at least 6 months ago (I have no internal knowledge now but very likely).

Re: Google Pay app will no longer be available

#96

Post by googlethrow11 »

ignoramous wrote: post #13
impulser_ wrote: post #12

So I did some research apparently they have gone full circle now. It started as Google Wallet renamed to Android Pay then renamed to Google Pay then split into Google Pay and Google Wallet and now back to just Google Wallet. Google is a fucking mess lol. I know Sundar has been great for shareholder, but man maybe it's time for a change. A fake post about them getting rid of Gmail next year is going viral on Twitter a…

> I know Sundar has been great... Think the execs responsible for this were excused en masse or quit: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/google-pay-team-repo... Some founded a fintech company that now also does AI, because why not.

No. The VP, Director of Engineering, Product Manager everyone quit. These people have been working 10+ years with Google.

Re: Google Pay app will no longer be available

#97

Post by googlethrow11 »

impulser_ wrote: post #12

So I did some research apparently they have gone full circle now. It started as Google Wallet renamed to Android Pay then renamed to Google Pay then split into Google Pay and Google Wallet and now back to just Google Wallet. Google is a fucking mess lol. I know Sundar has been great for shareholder, but man maybe it's time for a change. A fake post about them getting rid of Gmail next year is going viral on Twitter a…

Google processes $XXXB payments a year. This means they have their own internal Stripe like payment processing system which serves almost like an independent company to Google's various internal products.

Google Wallet is an Android only feature which was possible because of NFC etc. Its primary purpose was to seek parity with Apple Pay. This team can be seen as Android's part.

Google Pay is what merchants display. It means you can tap your phone and pay (using your wallet). It also allows online websites to accept payments using "Google Pay" button.

Gpay => Is the App. This is like Venmo/Cash app.

You might ask why create Gpay App when you have Google Wallet ? The answer is "India". Google Wallet is worthless in India because no one had cards and no one accepts them. Also phones do not have NFC. But India has UPI which allows easy real time transfers using QR codes and phone numbers. It made perfect sense for Google to create an App to cater to this case in India and it was widely successful.

For some reason some leaders thought they could replicate the same success in USA using the SAME APP. This was nonsensical because in USA you need to iterate fast and launch things even faster. Piggybacking on Indian App which has like 300M monthly active users was a bit like you trying to take your 1996 camry and trying to make it an EV.

Re: Google Pay app will no longer be available

#98

Post by xnx »

googlethrow11 wrote: post #75
dcchambers wrote: post #15

Google's history with their payment apps/platform is almost as convoluted as their history with message apps/platforms. I swear they have gone back and forth on Android Pay/Google Wallet/Google Pay a half dozen times.

I had the misfortune of working on this garbage of a project. One of the most pathetic software projects with some of the worse people I have ever worked in my life. Google Pay India is very successful. Not because it is actually good but rather the fact that it does not face the pressure to be very profitable unlike its competitors like PayTM (which now is pretty much dead). It is a good product with basic feature t…

This is great insider information. I followed blog posts at the time that made it pretty obvious this was a Ceasar Sengupta misadventure. The use of Flutter was also painfully obvious as the app did not behave in normal ways and had performance problems with simple interactions.
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