The only thing Google will never shut down is ads.
Google Checkout Closing Down on Nov. 20th
101–110 of 151 posts
Re: Google Checkout Closing Down on Nov. 20th
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's insane, maps collects huge amounts of data, google's raw material.
But you'd have to assume that Checkout also collected lots of raw data about people and their purchasing habits. It wasn't as if nobody used the service, it just wasn't the most popular.
Not enough data to be useful though. If they can't make behavioural predictive models of you to make ads & sell to the NSA it's not useful
Re: Google Checkout Closing Down on Nov. 20th
#103I think failures of projects such as this can be attributed to wrongly applying lean principles instead of coming out with a more complete offering. Checkout never really matured as a product and therefore made for a poor PayPal or merchant account alternative.
As a former Google Checkout/Wallet employee, this is completely right. When Checkout was first released, companies would get free AdWords credit to sign up and use the service. Also, non-profits got free processing. After this initial release and push to have this product adopted, nothing was done to move it forward. There were no updates and improvements made. The only changes were when patches and bug fixes for problems that affected a large amount of customers (not surprising since it is impossible to fix every issues that affects every customer, but when you are dealing with a product that some companies solely use to make a living you better try hard to fix as many problems as possible).
Re: Google Checkout Closing Down on Nov. 20th
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
More likely was Checkout With Amazon.
I don't think Checkout with Amazon has affected them at all. Checkout was closed to new signups since May 20th (from the article), and Wallet has been the digital-goods alternative for longer than that. My guess would be that operating a physical goods processing company is a huge drain on the resource Google hates providing most: customer service. Payment disputes are a pain, especially for physical goods. Some leve…
Google never had great customer service for this product. There were less than five people (customers often called this out since they would submit multiple help tickets and the same people would respond) and they never wanted to devote money to better customer service since the product wasn't maintained. Thus companies didn't want to adopt a below par product with bad customer service compounding the problem.
Re: Google Checkout Closing Down on Nov. 20th
#105I think failures of projects such as this can be attributed to wrongly applying lean principles instead of coming out with a more complete offering. Checkout never really matured as a product and therefore made for a poor PayPal or merchant account alternative.
As a former Google Checkout/Wallet employee, this is completely right. When Checkout was first released, companies would get free AdWords credit to sign up and use the service. Also, non-profits got free processing. After this initial release and push to have this product adopted, nothing was done to move it forward. There were no updates and improvements made. The only changes were when patches and bug fixes for pro…
> After this initial release and push to have this product adopted, nothing was done to move it forward.
That describes so many Google services. Some live on anyway, because for whatever reasons they meet Google's interests to keep running (Google Books). Some don't.
Re: Google Checkout Closing Down on Nov. 20th
#106Google Checkout has been depreciated since May. It's not like this come as a suprise.
the word is 'deprecated'.
'depreciated' is a different word.
Re: Google Checkout Closing Down on Nov. 20th
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, but how many business was using Google Checkout as only method of payment? This decision will hurt only those businesses. Rest of businesses using Google Checkout will remove one of payments method. Not a big deal, and we may guess that this method was probably not so popular already.
My startup for a time being was only using Google Checkout. Here lies the problem. Can't trust Google with building APIs when they reorganize. This is surprising to me, but I wonder if Google Maps could close down....
The more relevant question is not whether Google Maps could close down but whether it will change in a manner that adversely affects you. For example, with their new vector-based system, will Google phase out tiles at some point? There are some apps that might be incompatible with vector-based data, so this could matter. Or more relevantly, will Google restrict API access? Think of Twitter -- it's never closed its Tweet stream, but it has changed the rules for API usage, to the detriment of certain Twitter clients.
Re: Google Checkout Closing Down on Nov. 20th
#108If this was because checkout was a commercial failure they need to make that public knowledge. Otherwise this does make it seem like you can't rely on any Google product that's not part of their core offering. I'm specifically thinking of Google Voice & Keep.
How would it help you to know that it was a commercial failure? How would knowing that change your conclusion that you can't rely on Google products?
Re: Google Checkout Closing Down on Nov. 20th
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
App Engine — are you serious? New releases every few weeks, quite a few innovations technology-wise and essentially no freeriders. Also, I don't see a lot of competition in terms of equivalent solutions; if at all.
I can be wrong about App Engine. Here is my reasoning... I think App Engine does not fit nicely into Google's grand vision: which is mobile, social, and search for advertising purposes. So they need to be become profitable soon or they will be shut down. However they lack enterprise customers and without enterprise and corporate customers it very hard to make things profitable.
AppEngine and, really, all the "Cloud Platform" services from Google are a way to directly monetize the infrastructure that also supports Google's own applications. As such, if they are pricing them above the marginal hardware and support costs they are profitable, since the fixed costs are costs Google bears whether or not it offers them as an external service.
Re: Google Checkout Closing Down on Nov. 20th
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't worry, Google will buy them and shut them down too.
Why would you think that? It's not like Dorsey needs the money, Square are doing genuinely innovative things and I very much doubt they would be interested in selling to BigCorp.
When you take that much VC money you either have to IPO or get acquired by BigCorp. I doubt given Square's land grab that their underlying financials are very attractive so that would rule out IPO for a long time. So.....