Filed under: Business, Web services, Google
Google launches Google Checkout payment system
After literally years of rumors, Google has launched its much-talked-about e-commerce payment system, Google Checkout. The idea is simple: Google holds on to your credit card and shipping information, and when you find something you want to buy at a Google Checkout affiliate, completing the transaction is a one-step process. "The goal here is to make it be one nanosecond from the time the customer decides to buy to the time the transaction is complete and the product is on the way," says Google CEO Eric Schmidt in the New York Times' coverage of the launch. Google has a trick up its sleeve for luring in merchants, too: If you're a merchant who buys advertising from Google 
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
wrecker said 5:44PM on 6-29-2006
Its not AdSense -> Adsense is for Webmasters. Google checkout has incentives for merchants who spend on advertising with AdWords.
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Adam Ballai said 6:51PM on 6-29-2006
The API was developed very in depth with tax, shipping, and item storage. I believe this is an excellent way to do informational analytics on many levels of the consumer.
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Gil said 8:41AM on 6-30-2006
http://checkout.google.com/support/sell/bin/answer.py?answer=42871
Just when I thought this was going to be different from PayPal's policy. Google is loosing a lot of bussiness like this
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Hitesh Sawlani said 9:45AM on 6-30-2006
2% of the item? That is how much banks charge in Spain for processing credit cards.
SO
imagine the cost of an item (to the seller) is 16euros, he puts a 25% markup...
So he sells at 20euros
by selling once:
40cents goes to the bank for using a credit card(2%)
40cents goes to google (2%)
20cents goes to google (always...)
--------
1euro goes away
Profit goes from 4euros to 3euros... that is too much
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Jordan Running said 12:42PM on 6-30-2006
Hitesh: Google does the credit card processing--the merchant does not pay any additional money to the bank, and as I wrote above, its fees are fairly competetive.
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