Google Base starts taking cash – vnunet.com
If you try using Google Base to take payments from customers, let me (and my readers) know how well it works.
It seems improbably that Google Base will take any users away from PayPal which is so standard now. At least, it will take a long time to make a dent, unless somehow the user experience is better with Google Base.
(I personally have had tons of usability problems with PayPal. I only use it rarely, and I always seem to have problems with passwords and with the data entry screens. If Google Base uses the same login as most of my other features, then that might endear me to them.)
So let me know if you try it out.
I agree with you regarding paypal, I think it will be very hard for Google to make a dent into paypal.
I’m not so sure Paul – I think that if you look at the long game, and the “crossing the chasm” technology adoption curve at the same time, perhaps Google’s brand equity will play the most important role when compared to Paypal, because they might be able to capture more of the pragmatist market. Making their services play nice together will probably be the thing that gets more early adopters to switch from Paypal to Google, especially if the experience / ease of use is what we know it can be. I’m tempted to say that with the amount of cash flowing through Google due to Adsense and Adwords combined, Payments is entirely logical – and I wonder how that stacks up against Paypal?… When you combine that with the Asian market then I think it would be an interesting two horse race.
Anyways -> 1 year out – who knows; 3 years out – I’m thinking much of a muchness; 5 years and more – I can’t see much competition to Google, their brand and their service integration (unless they completely throw it away of course). Then again, them’s strange times we’re living in…
Microsoft’s http://expo.live.com was released this week, too. It is free for now, but will be interesting to see what they do for payment.
Just one of over a dozen interesting initiatives coming from Microsoft’s live.com..
See http://ideas.live.com/
And if you think Google Earth is cool, try this:
http://preview.local.live.com