Google Checkout will be retired, transition to Google Wallet

Google is making the same mistakes Microsoft made. Trying to enter into every industry it can thinking it can use it's monopoly power to take over the world. Reality: Doing 20 things mediocrely is not as profitable of doing 2 things very very well.<p>Result:<p>1) Constant experiments and dropped products (just like Microsoft).<p>2) Consumers no longer trust your services to stick around and no longer even invest in your platforms (*see most of Microsoft's offerings).<p>3) The services you do have aren't the highest quality and your brand takes a hit as being "giant mediocre corporation" like Microsoft instead of "high quality company" like Apple.<p>The more things change the more they stay the same.

Earlier today I received a phone call from a number in Mountain View CA. It was Google letting me know in advance that Google Checkout was to be shut down (and asking to keep the call quiet). This was, to say the least, very surprising considering I have very little correspondence with Google Checkout and was actually thinking there was a huge problem with my account. Thankfully not but this is still bad news for myself and I presume the industry at large.<p>Google Checkout was <i>very</i> good with their fraud protection to the point that I did not have to think about it. In fact, over the years I have been growing my business Google have been my rock---never a real issue with them.<p>PayPal was a similar story but it also seemed to attract the sort of customer that would open a dispute at almost any issue (or just threaten it). You can also count me in one of their horror stories that indirectly cost me £5k and even got to the point where they just flat out refused refunds for my customers who wanted them.<p>I have a Stripe and GoCardless account as well and I've been trying to make it work but their fraud protection is just not up to scratch compared to Google and PayPal, which is a real shame. I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to see enough data to get quite the same fraud protection. Stripe do look fun though.<p>Another perspective from a merchant: roll on Bitcoin. With exchanges offering guaranteed payouts in another currency (for me, GBP) I take on zero risk by accepting it and it solves so many problems. There's no wonder more and more websites are starting to accept it.

Although Google Checkouts is shutting down, Google Wallet for Digital Goods still lives on (<a href="https://support.google.com/checkout/sell/answer/3080449" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/checkout/sell/answer/3080449</a>). It offers pretty much the best pricing on the net (most favorable of 5% or 1.9% + 30c (USD) per transaction is automatically applied.) and works in way more countries and currencies than Google Checkout ever did (<a href="https://developers.google.com/commerce/wallet/digital/faq" rel="nofollow">https://developers.google.com/commerce/wallet/digital/faq</a>).

I don't trust Google any longer. Google (usually) brings out fantastic products only to neglect and abandon them like a bored toddler.<p>This wave of product discontinuations is making me extremely hesitant to use anything new Google brings out. If Google brought out Gmail today I'd sign up and explore what it's about, but I wouldn't ever give out the email address for fear that it would be snatched back with no or little notice.<p>I'm not going to pretend to know Google's business better than they do, but to me it appears as though they're really dropping the ball here and losing a lot of credibility and trust.

Anyone have any idea if this effectively terminates any existing recurring Google Checkout subscription payments (on November 20)? If so, that's kind of a big deal. Cutting off merchants from their revenue stream is a great way to get people really angry and could easily destroy a business.

This is a real shame. My business was one of the very first to integrate Google Checkout into a website shopping cart after the general release. I did a marathon coding session the first week it came out because I knew that it would be worth some free publicity if I got it working.<p>All of our payments come through either Google Checkout or PayPal. And some people really hate PayPal, so we will be looking for alternatives (Amazon Payments springs to mind).<p>I could see the writing on the wall for Google Checkout a couple years back, though. They failed to add any new features in recent times in order to try to match PayPal. The reporting was weak. E-mail notifications didn't always work right. Declined charges were a hassle. E-mail payment requests couldn't be formatted and were too short. Those were my main complaints, I'm sure there were many more problems faced by people who had different requirements.<p>Checkout had huge potential to integrate into Google's other services. For example, it let Google see directly who the best and most reliable merchants were. In fact, I believe you can still have Adwords show stars on your text ad based upon Checkout customer feedback.<p>Another useful integration is with Analytics. They did attempt some information sharing there. Tying Analytics directly to sales information is fantastic, and I wish they had made them work together better.

It's a real shame that Google Checkout never really was what was promised, we've integrated it into our shop and we have more GoCardless payments than Google Checkout, it was a horrible system to deal with and I won't miss it when it goes (and if I ever get a response about the Stripe UK beta I'll be swapping that quick sharpish)<p>We've had more declined transactions on Google Checkout than PayPal + GoCardless put together.

Retiring a payment system is really the ultimate insult to those that invest in your platforms.<p>Imagine the bank that you use for your business transactions, especially recurring billing, to one day walk in and say: so sorry, you won't be able to process your old payments any more, but here is a new and shiny service that we think is better that you'll have to use from now on.<p>Never mind the integration overhead, possible loss of business, customer service issues and all the other headaches that can come from a thing like this.<p>I'm scared just to change bank accounts given how far those bits of information have propagated, losing a billing platform is a nightmare for businesses that rely on it.<p>Why would anyone switch to another service by the same provider that just chose to shut you down or that chose to saddle you up with a bunch of overhead on this years calendar?<p>Google partnering with braintree, shopify and freshbooks is the saving grace here.<p>In payment systems only two things matter: fraud control and continuity. Google excels at the first, drops the ball on the second.

I am surprised that they will no longer offer processing. The whole reason I even used them was to prevent the need to deal with a payment processor (my current store options for customers are google and paypal).<p>I checked out amazon's offer again and will likely add them as a replacement. They have a lot of existing customers, the charge is reasonable, and I will be able to integrate it in a fairly painless manner.

I'm a bit uninformed about the capabilities of Google Wallet and Checkout. Anyone care to elucidate the differences? Do they perform the same functions?

I think the problem was Google's Api was very ill written compared to Paypal's. This may be an old implementation, but I think the Api didn't allow subscription services easily, and also notified it's sellers of an order immediately (regardless if the transaction was successful or not).<p>Beside, I think Google is investing the proper resources in building Waller to be a formidable product against Paypal, Amazon, and other 3rd Party checkouts.<p>Side Note: For the Google Checkout devs that read this, I'm sorry for what I did (Michael Largent).

I figured this was going to happen when they announced Wallet, :/. <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5714531" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5714531</a>

Good thing I'm not using Google Checkout anymore. It's still a shame though. I actually like it more than Paypal but having done some experiments with my ecommerce businesses (e.g. <a href="http://www.wellingtonstravel.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.wellingtonstravel.com/</a>) I found people trust the Paypal payment option more or are more familiar with it, leading to more conversions. So that's why I went with Paypal over Google Checkout.

Ugh, this is terrible. The one service I actually used with Google, and they shut it down. In their defense, its been dead for a while, they made the UI horrifying to use and a giant PITA. Glad I got my one last payment in.<p>Time to move to stripe.

Wait, so what's the difference between this and Google Wallet?

This is bizarre considering that the Gmail money thing just launched so Google is remaining in the payment processing business (different from Play in that Checkout and Google Gmail Money are much more accessible to recipients).

Uh... calling it a "shutdown" isn't all that close to the truth. They're transitioning from Checkout to Wallet.

anyone taking bets... ehm willing to speculate on what big is next dying at google? I'm thinking about google tv, or is that Q already gone? music? books? I'm happy to see G staying on the marketing garden

At some point I thought the master plan behind Google Checkout was to tie the adword payments to actual purchases behavior. So instead of paying per click an advertisers could have paid "per purchase".<p>With enough sites on board Google would probably have been in quite good position in trying to figure out if the user is really going to make the purchase or not. If user is likely to purchase, then show him "pay per purchase" ads otherwise just regular "pay per click".

If you are interested, I have been keeping score: <a href="http://jensenbox.github.io/timeline/" rel="nofollow">http://jensenbox.github.io/timeline/</a>

Could this mean that could expand the number of countries that were supported by checkout?<p>I really hope so, not being able to sell in the Play Store/Chrome Web Store is something we've been looking for a while.

This title is inaccurate. Google Checkout is being upgraded to Google Wallet, which provides the _exact_ same functionality with more features.

I wonder if anyone besides Braintree will step in with a copy of Google's APIs and try to win some easy business?

I reason google shoud bring labs from the dea, and use it to test the waters with products like this.

Amazon is still a viable alternative to PayPal.<p>I used it to buy the latest Humble Bundle.

I just hope they don't toss Scholar. That thing is salvation.

The post says they are transitioning over to Wallet in the very first sentence. It's amazing how many people are commenting without even getting that far into the link.

does anyone have any idea what happens to the google drive subscription, if you're paying via google checkout?