6 Comments

Attention Merchants, Google wants to CHECKOUT your Customers!

Jul 1, 2006
by

After pondering Wayne’s post where he questions if Google is really the Merchant’s friend. I took a look at the following promotional video created by Google to explain the benefits of Google Checkout to consumers:

There are a few things that stand out here:

  • Google will store your complete shopping history
  • Google won’t share your full credit card number, even with merchants (ok, Google’s sending the money)
  • Google won’t share your email address with merchants if you don’t want them to
  • Google will not spam you

Ok, so basically this is a play for under the disguise of convenience, Google is moving to owning the customer. Although they won’t spam you, I bet they might begin to offer behavior targeting of ads based on your purchase behavior, offer recommendations of other products you might be interested in, and potentially offer you email offers and deals that you opt-in for “not spam”.

I’m a bit confused about the non-sharing of email thing. I think email is an important part of an ecommerce transaction for confirmations and shipping follow ups. It is also important for a merchant to capture email addresses for follow-up promotional offers. My guess is that Google will feed a “forward-through” email address on behalf of the customers and then stand in the middle of what gets through and what doesn’t. (read spam filters)

I guess the question merchants have to ask themselves is what is the value of having the little shopping cart next to your Google search ads? Is it worth not being able to directly follow up with your customers via email? How successful was Microsoft Passport or any of the other digital wallet technologies. How many ways to check out are you prepared to offer before the number of checkout options makes the process more confusing?

So, now the “Do no Evil” Google will have your search behavior and your purchase behavior, that could be an interesting combination.

I also heard in one report, but didn’t see anything about it in this video, where Google will offer cash back on transactions for consumers using Google Checkout. Look out UPromise and FatWallet, Google may be after your lunch too…

Filed under: Online Marketing
  • http://www.revenews.com/jimmydaniels/ Jimmy Daniels

    One day: Google = Internet.

  • http://www.imwave.com Adam Viener

    I'd gladly pay you tuesday for a hamburger today…

  • http://www.revenews.com/bethkirsch/archives/002032.html ReveNews – Beth Kirs

    Google Points Coming Soon!

    I admit, I'm late in writing about Google Checkout and now I'm certainly last, my question to my fellow bloggers, don't you guys have jobs? And Adam Viener beat me to the punch implying Google Points are just around the corner because I was to sl…

  • http://besthomejobs.info anudeep

    Hello all,

    I am really not one that transcats business online. And I am not the type that frequently purchase online.

    However about the question in point I would like to say with my personal experience that google is the most trustable organisation. Of course they prooved it recently by not disclosing their customer details even to Courts. They just did not bent, unlike their competitors, to the requests and demands of even Govts when it came to disclosing of information. Because they have strong policy and they always act for the best interests of their customers.

    So this could be a litmus test for their authentisity and how they care for their customers in particular and privacy of whole netizens in general.

    Coming to the point that they wanna own the customers and the possibility of their likely recommendations of products to customers, it would be pertinent to mention that we are all receiving many recommendations from the moment we wakeup untill we go to bed in our daily life. The modern society has turned into a open ad gallery.

    Compared to that sort of spam we receive daily I dont think google's likely recommendations bother us more than what we have already subjected to.

    Google care for their customers more and apart from that they also have all the technology necessary to safe protect all their customers.

    In the merchant point of view, they also need not worry about disowning a customer as google always values the merchants also. There are number of merchants who have just got better and got rich using google's services. Google values quality and

    true relationship. Merchants also need not bother about loosing their customers as google seldom show partiality or bias. Treat google as just a unbiased benefator and all our doubts and apprehensions would be vanished.

  • http://www.quityourdayjob.com Jeremy Palmer

    Anudeep – Do you work for Google? How many shares of GOOG do you own?

    I don't give Google any more data than I need to. They offer conversion tracking, analytics, and now checkout. Do you really think they offer these services to "enhance" the advertiser experience? Google is in the information business. The more information they have, the more powerful they become.

    Google owning the Internet scares me a hell of a lot more than Microsoft owning the desktop. Personally, I'm hoping Yahoo and MSN will get their act together and give Google some competition.

    Jeremy

  • http://www.mercantec.com Rob

    Google Checkout integration is a no brainer if you're already an active AdWords advertiser.

    The free transaction processing is basically free money.

    The shopping cart icon that appears next to your ad makes it stand out against your competitors' ads. This is a huge benefit to small merchants, who have a hard time establishing trust with potential shoppers. This icon should increase their click through rates and "browser to buyer" conversion rate.

    Just my $.02.