Remember all of that talk a few months ago after the launch of Google Checkout about how it was going to “kill” PayPal? Well, that hasn’t exactly happened. In fact, Google said yesterday that it was waving the fees for the service through Dec. 31 to attaract more users, according to the the AP. The company had already offered discounts to merchants based on the amount of advertising they purchased. Does that mean that eBay can breathe a sigh of relief? Hardly. Just because Google hasn’t set the world on fire with its payments service now doesn’t mean that it won’t gain traction in the future. Then again, that doesn’t mean that eBay is going to wither away either. Cantankerous eBay merchants have said they welcomed Google’s move because they were upset with the service they got from PayPal. Google, being Google, had its own unique spin on this move on the Official Google Checkout blog. “With the holiday season quickly approaching, we wanted to do something to say ‘thank you’ to our merchants.” PayPal is offering its own holiday cheer by spending as much as $100 million on holiday rebates and free shipping, according to Bloomberg News.
MarketWatch: Introduced with great fanfare by analysts, the Checkout feature stumbled out of the gate with what many criticized as an overly strict antifraud measures that delayed processing transactions sometimes for weeks. By offering Checkout for free, Google is adding yet another promotion to try and spur adoption of the feature, which is used by a few hundred Web sites.
Subscriber content
?
Subscriber content comes from Gigaom Research, bridging the gap between breaking news and long-tail research. Visit any of our reports to learn more and subscribe.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
["wijax_36ea356414febab305db200900549172","wijax_699883564b47b9ed37cdcb5cbc2bb677"]
{"source":"https:\/\/gigaom.com\/2006\/11\/09\/google-makes-checkout-service-free-adding-to-pressure-on-ebays-paypal-busin\/wijax\/49e8740702c6da9341d50357217fb629","varname":"wijax_a272e565c48fcada08d412ffcb9e5ebe","title_element":"header","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Cheader%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fheader%3E"}
{"source":"https:\/\/gigaom.com\/2006\/11\/09\/google-makes-checkout-service-free-adding-to-pressure-on-ebays-paypal-busin\/wijax\/49e8740702c6da9341d50357217fb629","varname":"wijax_a272e565c48fcada08d412ffcb9e5ebe","title_element":"header","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Cheader%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fheader%3E"}
Comments have been disabled for this post