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Google Checkout will be retired, transition to Google Wallet

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Re: Google Checkout will be retired, transition to Google Wallet

#102

Google is making the same mistakes Microsoft made. Trying to enter into every industry it can thinking it can use it's monopoly power to take over the world. Reality: Doing 20 things mediocrely is not as profitable of doing 2 things very very well. Result: 1) Constant experiments and dropped products (just like Microsoft). 2) Consumers no longer trust your services to stick around and no longer even invest in your pl…

> Google is making the same mistakes Microsoft made. Trying to enter into every industry it can thinking it can use it's monopoly power to take over the world. I call this the Spaghetti Cannon strategy. Load up a cannon with cash and different ideas, blow up the cash and see what sticks to the wall. If we redrew the corporate boundaries of Google and Microsoft, we'd see them as investment firms tasked with turning a…

Apparently this strategy seems to work also for hardware. Look at Samsung.

Re: Google Checkout will be retired, transition to Google Wallet

#103
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be a mistake that a ton of startups make as well. It's a result of indecisive (read:poor) management and inevitably leads to doing nothing particularly well. One company that I've seen not fall into this trap is Dropbox. Dropbox offers one amazing service and pours all it's efforts into that, and from what I hear they have some insanely smart people working there doing that. As a result they can afford…

Question. Do you actually use Dropbox ? Because for me it is one of the most overrated services I use. They haven't actually done anything new to the product since the beginning and the CPU load when syncing is still ridiculously high. IMHO The only reason Dropbox is successful because the alternatives e.g. SkyDrive, Google Drive are so much worse.

They do seem to be adding lots to Dropbox but I don't get the worship myself. Sugarsync offered me exactly what I wanted that Dropbox didn't and I never looked back.

Re: Google Checkout will be retired, transition to Google Wallet

#104

Google is making the same mistakes Microsoft made. Trying to enter into every industry it can thinking it can use it's monopoly power to take over the world. Reality: Doing 20 things mediocrely is not as profitable of doing 2 things very very well. Result: 1) Constant experiments and dropped products (just like Microsoft). 2) Consumers no longer trust your services to stick around and no longer even invest in your pl…

Um, did you read the post or just the headline. Aren't they just replacing Google Checkout with Google Wallet and isn't Google Wallet better than Google Checkout? It sounds like an upgrade to me. What am I missing? Is it just a messaging problem? If they had instead said "We're renaming Google Checkout to Google Wallet. We're introducing API v2. API v1 is deprecated and will be turned off in 6 months so upgrade your…

No, that is not accurate. Google Checkout processes payments for the merchant, and Google deposits the funds in the merchant's bank account.

With the new system, Google has an API to give you the users information, but the merchant must have some way of processing the payment.

So these two are not the same at all.

I can tell you for my ecommerce site, I intend to drop Google Wallet altogether.. After the numerous Froogle/Google shopping api changes, I have no hope that the new api will stick around for any reasonable amount of time. So I just don't think it's worth the effort.

Edit: for comparison to Google Checkout, I get roughly 15x the number of orders with PayPal.. and 25x the number of orders from Visa/MC/Dscv/Amex.

Google's implementation of Checkout was flawed from the start (esp how they handled/treated merchants).. So I'm not surprised it didn't go anywhere.

Re: Google Checkout will be retired, transition to Google Wallet

#105

Google is making the same mistakes Microsoft made. Trying to enter into every industry it can thinking it can use it's monopoly power to take over the world. Reality: Doing 20 things mediocrely is not as profitable of doing 2 things very very well. Result: 1) Constant experiments and dropped products (just like Microsoft). 2) Consumers no longer trust your services to stick around and no longer even invest in your pl…

Um, did you read the post or just the headline. Aren't they just replacing Google Checkout with Google Wallet and isn't Google Wallet better than Google Checkout? It sounds like an upgrade to me. What am I missing? Is it just a messaging problem? If they had instead said "We're renaming Google Checkout to Google Wallet. We're introducing API v2. API v1 is deprecated and will be turned off in 6 months so upgrade your…

I'm not a merchant, but it sounds like there's a bigger difference from that side -"If you don't have your own payment processing, you will need to transition to a different solution within six months. To make things easier, we've partnered with Braintree, Shopify and " to offer you discounted migration options. "

Re: Google Checkout will be retired, transition to Google Wallet

#106

Google is making the same mistakes Microsoft made. Trying to enter into every industry it can thinking it can use it's monopoly power to take over the world. Reality: Doing 20 things mediocrely is not as profitable of doing 2 things very very well. Result: 1) Constant experiments and dropped products (just like Microsoft). 2) Consumers no longer trust your services to stick around and no longer even invest in your pl…

I disagree on some levels.

I think the amount of innovation and creativity that Google pushes for is amazing.

What if Checkout was the next big thing? At least they tried it and can put it in the history books now.

I do agree with point number 2, that they are making their services seem "legitimate" too quickly. Personally I would move them back to their Google Labs days to solve that problem. Where they would make a larger point of this service being in BETA and possibly not a long term goal.

From there if it passes BETA just streamline it, make it profitable, and keep it for as long as possible.

Perhaps that's what they're doing, but seeing a headline on HN every few days about "X Google Service Shutting Down" is incredibly disheartening and damaging to their brand, I agree completely on that one.

EDIT: The "Go Programming Language was first designed and developed at Google Inc." according to wikipedia. And we all love Go on HN. So it's hit and miss just like anything else, but godspeed to them for trying!

Re: Google Checkout will be retired, transition to Google Wallet

#107
post #71

Google is making the same mistakes Microsoft made. Trying to enter into every industry it can thinking it can use it's monopoly power to take over the world. Reality: Doing 20 things mediocrely is not as profitable of doing 2 things very very well. Result: 1) Constant experiments and dropped products (just like Microsoft). 2) Consumers no longer trust your services to stick around and no longer even invest in your pl…

I disagree. Google's recent efforts to narrow its focus (i.e. Google+, killing Reader) have been miserable failures. Being able to do 50 things at once, on the other hand, lets them come up with truly groundbreaking things like Glass and the self-driving car.

Google didn't exactly invent the self-driving car - they basically bought the Stanford team and some people from CMU and elsewhere.

Re: Google Checkout will be retired, transition to Google Wallet

#108
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I work at Stripe.) Sorry you haven't gotten one yet! I just sent an invite your way.

Is this for e-commerce? I just suspected you guys didn't seriously consider e-commerce since you don't do pre-auth and settlement. It being illegal to charge the customer before shipping in some countries and such.

They do: https://support.stripe.com/questions/can-i-authorize-a-charg...

Re: Google Checkout will be retired, transition to Google Wallet

#109

Uh... calling it a "shutdown" isn't all that close to the truth. They're transitioning from Checkout to Wallet.

It may be a transition for Checkout users, but it's a shutdown for merchants.

* Shutting down payment processing which was a pretty fundamental part of the offering

* they're requiring you to reapply to get an instant buy account

* They're killing off the APIs

It's not a transition if you lose a core feature, don't transition the accounts in any meaningful way, and have to implement a new system - at that point it's about like switching to PayPal (except you get to keep payment processing if you switch).

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