A while back there were rumors of Google Payments, a Paypal competitor on the way. Well, if this is right, it will be named GBuy and will be launched June 28th. Also, it sounds as though there may be no fee for merchants during the test. After that, there will be a percentage fee on each transaction – they’re saying 1.5-2% which is less than paypals rate currently.
Sounds like things could heat up quickly between Ebay/Paypal and Google this summer. Google Base, with an integrated GBuy….
There have been a couple of interesting articles lately about the evolution of Google Base. When it came out, I remember thinking I would have to spend some time thinking about how to use it. It has interesting potential to be a VERY powerful tool for Google in their competition for web traffic. One article in particular, tells how in a sense Google Real Estate has started appearing…. “When searching “houses for sale” in a regular Google search, some users might see a one-box that helps narrow down what type of house they are looking for.” Now, Google Real Estate might not be an official product launch, but an example of integration of Google Base information into regular search results.
Betanews is reporting that Microsoft has a competitor to Google Base in the works already, fremont.live.com is currently restricted to MS employees but a broader beta is claimed to be coming later this month (ummm… since this is the next to last day of November, I’ll assume they mean later NEXT month, unless tomorrow is the plan..) Anyway, they likely see the potential of such a development as Google base to draw and drive traffic.
I noticed that the googleblog had a note today about some improvements to Froogle that have been rolled out. I have noticed recently that some products were “clustered” with price descriptions of (from $22-$49) or something, which when clicked would show you the exact same item at multiple places (more targeted than just a search for a product name.) The real evolution of it is local…
Sometime back, there was talk of Google Base, a databas-ish product coming from Google. Let me let a summary from their blog explain it…
Rather than impose specific schemas and structures on the world, Google Base suggests attributes and item types based on popularity, which you can use to define and attach your own labels and attributes to each data item. Then searchers can find information more quickly and effectively by using these labels and attributes to refine their queries on the experimental version of Google Base search.