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Monday, June 20, 2005 8:00 PM PT Posted by Harry McCracken
Would You Trust Google With Your Money?
Word on the Web has it that Google is readying an online payment service that could provide competition to eBay's pervasive PayPal. The folks at Google won't comment on these reports, but they apparently incorporated something called the Google Payment Corp. earlier this year. That certainly sounds like a clue that something's in the works.I don't have any inside info about this service, but I do have a few questions:
How would it work? PayPal became popular in part because it let ordinary folks and very small businesses do credit-card and bank transactions relatively easily. I haven't seen any reports on whether Google's service would serve a similar purpose. (It could be something else, such as a micropayment system for merchants on Google's Froogle shopping service.)
Would it be less annoying than PayPal? As useful as PayPal is, I've never found it to be all that consumer-friendly a service. As a customer, I'm still irritated over an instance a few years ago when someone had sent me a payment via PayPal and the service wouldn't give me the money until I agreed to "upgrade" my PayPal account to a new tier of service that involved additional fees. (To me, that smacked of holding my money hostage.) And the distinction between payments made with a credit card and those made through bank electronic transfers can be confusing. I think there's an opportunity for someone to create a PayPal-like service that's simpler and more user-oriented. And given Google's expertise at boiling down complicated tasks to their essence, I'm curious to see how they'd handle it.
Can Google succeed where others have failed? Lots of would-be PayPal killers have come and gone, including ones from big-name financial institutions such as Citicorp. Most were me-too offerings at best. (BidPay seems to be one rival that's found a niche, but it did so by offering something that PayPal doesn't: The ability to send a money order electronically.) Google doesn't have any experience doing financial stuff, but considering the track record of companies that do have that experience, that might not be an impediment.
Is PayPal's eBay connection a huge advantage? I don't know what percentage of PayPal's business involves eBay auctions, but it's presumably huge--and given how tightly PayPal is integrated into eBay these days, it would be awfully tough for any third party service to compete. Even one run by the clever folks at Google.
Would the competition help consumers? I'll hazard a guess here that the answer to this question would be "yes, definitely." If PayPal had at least one strong rival, it would have more incentive to do innovative things with consumers in mind, and to keep its fees under control.
How does all this fit into Google's mission? Google says that its goal "is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." There's probably some way to rationalize financial transactions as falling under that umbrella. But you do have to wonder at what point Google will stretch its much-touted mission beyond recognition as the company expands into new realms.
If Google does launch a payment service, the most important question may be the one I posed in the title to this posting, but which I can't answer for you. So you tell me: Would you trust Google with your money?
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i would rather trust Google than a company that makes money off burnt toast.. :) Paypal does have to many annonyances, but i still think they are two different products that could co-exist
Till today, I can't get my freakin Paypal account to function as how I want it!
Yes, I would definatly trust Google to transact my money nicely and in a friendly way.
PayPal is the most annoying online payment company. How come the biggest company like PayPal unable to provide 180 countries credit card payment?
yes scorpion, biggest company but cant provide into others company? if google is going to have that service, i would surely use google
Paypal fees are a huge scam. Any for disagreements they hold your money for an excissively long time. If you already withdrew before the dispute, Paypal threatens to remove the money from your bank account to cover any potential losses. This of course is done without your consent.
The fact that paypal is a subsidiary of ebay makes their fees even more annoying. Sellers get charged twice, once for the ad, and again for receiving money. The 3% + fees are usuary.
PayPal is great! I have never had a problem.
Oh H3LL NO!
For a company that has a so called motto to "Do no evil", I find it rather curious that they don't define what they consider "evil".
Taking peoples' private information and re-selling it: evil, or just not good? As one can imagine, there is a HUGE gray area in between "Good" and "Evil".
I'll never trust them until they come up with a satisfactory definition
i'm with the 'yes' crowd.
paypal is just a pain in the a$s to work with and set up etc.....
definitely not a user friendly interface.
if google lowers the fees involved or made it easier to use, or both, i think it'd find a place to operate (outside of eBay that is).
I already trust them with the $75 I have made from ads on my website, but they won't give it to me until I have at least $100.
Never had a problem with Paypal myself -- and though I like the idea of competition lowering the transaction fees, I dislike the idea of Google becoming the Internet Borg.
I think the only reason folks still love Google is their Cinderella-like roots. Well, the web's favorite princess might make a really lousy queen.
At this point, I trust PayPal more than I would trust Google. Google has totally ignored the blind on the need for accessible visual verification, so it is highly likely that Google would continue its practice of discrimination against the blind by locking us out of signing up for such a payment service by implementing yet another visual verification scheme without providing accessible alternatives. At least, PayPal tries. It is rather accessible. I'd rather deal with accessible PayPal and all its problems than an inaccessible Google, even if it didn't have all the other reported issues.
I think a better question would be, "Would you trust a product that may indefinately be in the Beta stage with your money?"
^^ laughs at the Beta comment. Although I haven't had any problems with any Beta features of Google - it would be nice for them to act a little more confident or sure about some of their services -especially if they were money related. You don't want to manage your online transactions via an experiment.
Well this would certainly keep PayPal's fees in check and might make them follow more bank-like federal guidelines if Google goes that route.
Competition is never a bad thing.
You know whats google's made of: geeks and brains. Id rather trust google that paypal. That said, paypal's connection to ebay is not something to be proud of.
You know whats google's made of: geeks and brains. Id rather trust google that paypal. That said, paypal's connection to ebay is not something to be proud of. Also, if google does that, its gonna be the tip of the iceberg in multi national corp! You control info, and finance, you control pretty much everything...
Google, the very last of the pure search engines, would seem the most likely company to succeed PayPal. Thank God for Google. When the Google search engine ceases to exist, who knows where to go for unbiased internet exploration? Why would we not give the people at Google a chance at rivaling PayPal? What do we have to lose - perhaps our bittersweet relationship with PayPal?
I'll trust Google, when I applied to PayPal they said my bank account did not exist ? Strange, I have several monthly automatic deductions come out of this account incl. my mortage pmt. and they all work well. Sent Pay-Pal voided check and bank statement, STILL SAY MY ACCOUNT DOES NOT EXIST ??? Bring on GOOGLE. Thanks, Bob
Look there are pros and cons on it.
PayPal is now established and trustworthy. They have their ducks in a row and you pay for that. Fees are a wee bit too steep.
Google is great at what they do, but unless they can be as secure as PayPal, have all the right protections and can make it cheaper in fees or provide a bigger area for other countries; they will not make a good go of it.
I want to see the paperwork first before I stick my foot in.
Only if Eric Schmidt & company include a (secure) biometric based EFT/EDI platform will Google have a prayer at establishing a beach head in R/T payment adjudication process model.
Someone should alert Eric to contact me for the particulars.
Gbuy and Froogle.. will become like paypal and ebay.....especially when google starts advertizing this set up....and since so many sellers are needing competition for ebay they will have better deals for buyers with Gbuy and Froogle.... and then it will start to build solidly...with GBUY buyers may have the protection they need when buying and sellers will lower prices to build this competion that will help all sellers....
Paypal sucks. Their money protection guratee is scam. If you can reach someone sensible on phone - good luck. They will be erased in next 10 years by any reasonable and customer friendly company. Let Gbuy come and people will start seeing difference. Strong tie to Ebay ? does that mean, if Gbuy succeeds, Ebay will also suffer ? What would prevent one to list on Ebay and still accept payment via Gbuy ?
Citing high cases of credit card fraud, Paypal refuses to offer its services in my country--the Philippines. I'd rather trust Google than a company that doesn't trust me.