Google has been trying to compete with other Internet companies on all dimensions including eCommerce. Google checkout was such an effort rolled out with big fanfare in the last shopping season. However, it also exposed some weaknesses in this area.
I tried this new shopping cart service with a couple of purchases from buy.com. Upon completion of purchase selection I had one fleeting opportunity to select the Google Checkout among other existing choices such as credit card payment directly to the merchant or Paypal. Even though the Google option has big promotion behind it, buy.com hasn’t wholeheartedly bought into it and was still trying to steer customers to more traditional payment channels. Challenge number one for Google.
The handover process happens in a non-smooth fashion in that customers completely leave the merchant site and are directed to the Google site. Furthermore there’s a disconnect for customer service. Unlike other payment options, Google was setup to be the intermediatory for all customer service. However, Google as a company wasn’t setup to handle customer services. Plus it has no idea what the problem might be since the merchant owns the knowledge of the particular purchase.
In my case, I waited for a month and hasn’t got any delivery. Since it is a Google checkout, the merchant doesn’t have the purchase record handy. So my inquiry has to be rerouted by Google to the merchant. A few more weeks later, it was automatically cancelled probably due to the frustration on the merchant end.
Google on everything sounds like a good idea. But it still has a long way to go for it to become reality.