Google’s new online payment service is named “Checkout”. The news is that Google’s checkout service has cut Paypal’s lead in that market in half - already. This is really amazing since Paypal is well established.

I would have to guess, however, that a lot of Google’s success in this market should be credited to Paypal’s many problems. Even though Paypal was the first well-known secured-socket-layer (SSL) third party payment system on the web they have major organizational and user-support problems.

Paypal is expectedly pushy, especially on their parent company’s Ebay site, to use their system. But, then the problems start. Paypal is inordinately slow and ignorant with any mistakes made in their system - yours or theirs. Paypal has lawsuits pertaining to their dealings with clients for several reasons.

Unhappily, Paypal gets targeted by every scam artist on the net. These criminals send out false statements to everybody with an email telling them to check in with name, pass or credit card numbers. Early on this scamming caused some real ripoffs. These ripoffs were not Paypals’ problem. But dealing with the aftermath was definitiely Paypal’s problem.

They were incapable of straightening things out with any customer who made a mistake or got bilked. Ebayers by the droves began refusing to use Paypal. Having been victim of this myself I recently checked with Paypal support, by email and telephone. The various support personnel I spoke to sounded unaware of my prior accounts financial records, even though they keep asking me back. They also said they had no record of past communications. And to a person sounded brand-new in the job.

Now, about Google. I would expect their market share to increase steadily until they meet the curve of their incompetence and their lack of real support takes its toll. Having done business with GoogleAds, Gmail and some other Google programs I have found them to be equally user-unfriendly and high-handed in all their automated transactions - and incapable of actual support.

In this day of jacking up a stock, jumping ship with the profits, and then letting the ship sink - I predict Paypal and Google are poised for rape. Techies and tech investors know that the lifespan of any tech is short, so why get all integrity-involved. These kinds of companies shake out easy - way too easy.

A company like MoneyBookers.com not only gets hacked and frauded less, they have not suffered any disability to do customer support that I have heard of, they are my pick for the next ten years.

When Google Checkout was just a rumor floating around the blogosphere eBay posted notices about not accepting payment services without a longstanding customer base. So, there won’t be any Google Checkout at eBay “where PayPal has always worked just fine.”(?) And judging from the rapid public acceptance, Paypal-Ebay knew they were big dumb sitting ducks.

However Checkout is already taking some hits from prominent Google authority, John Battelle, who posted a very negative review of the product on his blog. Who is casting out who?

It’s a Hardball Thing,
Arthur Browning