Google Announces Google Checkout: Helps Impulse Buyers Everywhere
Google announced early today that Google Checkout is live.
With the announcement of yet another service for Google to add to their empire, as well as the the Fed Raising Interest Rates Again made Google stock (GOOG) jump 11 points today. Man, if Google even makes a peep it seems like the whole world stops to listen.
What does this mean for you and I without Google Stock (GOOG). Well from what I can tell of the service it means we can spend money a lot easier on the web, without inputting anything into forms. Although Internet Explorer, IE, comes with a form filler, as does the Google and MSN toolbars, they don’t make managing your impulse buys quite as easy as Google Checkout.
For those of you in love with Paypal, don’t worry Google Checkout isn’t taking them over quite yet. The service is more for existing stores and to keep your orders tracked from one main site. Creating a bank, like Paypal, is going to take a little more time than what was spent on Google Checkout. But Google Checkout does offer a really nice one click easy way to shop at a lot of your favorite online stores; “Jockey, Starbucks Store, Levi’s, Dockers, Buy.com, Timberland, Zales.”
And for those of you who use AdWords to advertise you can use it there, although once you set up an account it’s pretty easy to have them automatically take the funds out of your account. But it’s there.
Just to check it out I decided to head over to Timberland and see what was new. I searched through some men’s goodies and found a nice pair of timbo boots, added them to the cart, and checked out my shopping bag. There it was, proceed with checkout or…. checkout with Google. Clicked on the icon, and it directed me to the wonderful white space filled touched up with blues, reds, greens, and yellows, that is Google. Simple checkout, sign-in, I’m done.
I’m not so sure this is a good thing though. Whenever I went to an online store, filled my cart with goodies, and proceeded to the checkout, the time I spent finding my credit card, typing in all the numbers, looking for the CVC code, was my time to decide.
“Do I really want this purchase?”
Now without that time, I fear I may purchase a few too many goodies from online stores. All I have to do is enter my numbers. Hmm. Maybe I should start a Betty Ford Clinic’esque, Over Buyers Anonymous Clinic.
Back to the bit about taking over Paypal and ruling payments on eBay. Could it happen? Yes. However, to do that you’d need to give every seller their own store like account to manage everyones purchases, allow real cash, rather than just credit card payments to exchange hands, and need we not forget… Take over Paypal.
Until then Google Checkout is what it is. An even faster way to auto fill your credit card info online. There’s no “money” exchanging hands, and you can’t fund your account through a bank account. It’s just an easy way for resellers to get you to use a credit card.
But we’ll all be waiting for the next version of Google Checkout.