Google Checks In, Banks Check Out
So now that the blogerati have settled down on Google Checkout’s launch frenzy, let me take a moment to comment on how they are going to finagle the banks out of being the de facto merchant processors of the web. Banks today don’t do the long tail. Even the ones that purport to be “affinity” focuses such as the former-MBNA portfolios are false advertising on the customization front. Our friends at Google on the other hand do the long tail very well. Adsense is the perfect long tail network and their democratic advertising through ad words drives 50% to 100% of the traffic to their small and medium business clients. Now throw in Google Checkout and you have a closed loop from segment identification to closing the sale. Fine nothing new here right? Well if Google Checkout is works well and Ad Words continues to do its thing, Google will likely never charge any of their advertisers for the transaction.
It is wins all around: business owners who advertise get free credit/debit processing on their site via a trusted consumer name like Google. Google gets transaction data to sophisticate its advertising model. Consumers get smart and legitimate way to buy things from sites that are not called Amazon.com. Now let’s watch them collapse Froogle (holy branding snafu) into the Google Base strategy and you have a complete and open business platform minus banks.
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