Saturday, August 26, 2006

Google Checkout update

A whopping 2-3 weeks later...

So as I said in the last post, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to try out Google Checkout and get a free t-shirt with all that cool stuff on it. Well, I went ahead and bought a 40GB LaCie external hard drive from Buy.com costing about $82, and I now use it to help manage my 2001 Dell laptop which runs fine but has been approaching its storage capacity. The 40GB house my music, pictures, movies, all that static type stuff.

As for the t-shirt, well that came about a week later. Google only issued size Large which isn't a problem. They also made the shirt in high-quality 100% combed cotton. On the font it says "Google Checkout" with the shopping cart logo, and on the back it has small print saying "I checked out Google Checkout [line break] August 2006". Pretty nice side benefit to getting a great product from Buy.com.

My experience with Google Checkout proved smooth and exciting. The smart concept of attaching your Google account with your checking account in this way will definitely change the way consumers and vendors approach Internet business. Think about somebody who wants to sell something online but they don't necessarily want to have all the infrastructure that an online store requires. Checkout allows them to sign up with Google and more quickly open up a sort of Internet mom 'n pop shop (at least this is my understanding of the way it works). Though I haven't done the research on it yet, I will report later on how this solves deficiencies in the PayPal format. Perhaps it simply integrates the service with an online presence that people can more readily identify within their lives (the world of Google, that is).

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