There was a lot of speculation that one more Google service is going to kill an already established player in the market, that is Google Checkout, once it comes out will kill eBay’s Pay Pal just as many of Google’s services did to their competitors. However, contrary to what many believed, Google Checkout seems to have lost out in the race. Merchants or consumers have had lukewarm response towards it, so far that is.
As Donna Bogatin writes, From AdWords customers, to Google Checkout merchants, to would-be Google Checkout users, reports of technical problems and unsatisfactory service are surfacing.
Google Checkout got very bad reviews from both merchants and consumers that Google attributed to mainly technical reasons as transactions repeatedly failed. This became such a problem that Levi.com, according to Marketwatch, has reportedly removed the Google Checkout payment processing option from its site due to performance shortcomings.
So what is Google saying about this. The Google Checkout Blog writes;
We manually review a very small percentage of transactions, and we take the potential effect of this review time on order processing very seriously.
That’s why we are constantly evaluating and streamlining the review process, working to minimize the impact on order processing while still helping protect your business. We acted early on to address the feedback we received from some merchants about the review process, taking steps to streamline it, reduce review times, and communicate with sellers more clearly about our fraud-prevention efforts. We’ve also been working to fine-tune our systems so they’re even more effective at identifying transactions that warrant review. We’re committed to constantly improving this area and the entire product.
Ok, I know Google is not going to rest here resigned to whatever has happened with its Checkout dreams. Google is not a company that will checkout soon, we all know that; don’t we?
Let’s see what will Google do to get Google Checkout back on track. I have a feeling that if it can improve the service, then eBay’s Pay Pal will then have a much serious issue at hand. However, how Google can make it more powerful, easier and useful than Pay Pal is something, which is up to the Google think-tank, which in my opinion is quite capable of conjuring.
