Skip to main content

Welcome to Google Checkout, that will be $3.14

From ZDNet

The first time I looked up the domain "GDrive.com" it appeared that someone other than Google had it registered. A trip down memory lane takes us to my very first article that describes how I determined GDrive.com is in fact owned by Google, despite what it looks like on the surface.

Well, by the same logic I have found that a brand new set of domains appearing to be registered to someone else were actually registered by Google on May 25th.

The domains googlecheckout.net/org/info (.com is owned by someone else at the moment) have all been registered to a company called DNStination, Inc. Don't be fooled, the registrar is MarkMonitor — a company that prides itself on the protection of your corporate identity. There is no way they would let just anybody register a domain with "Google" in it — especially since Google is one of their clients.

Then who is this DNStination, Inc. then? Googling the address of this "company" tells us exactly who it is. The address maps directly to none other than MarkMonitor itself.

Since we know Google is behind it's registration, what is Google Checkout going to be? I think it will be a shopping cart system to help websites accept payment for their items online. The money site owners make will be deposited into a holding account at Google — just like AdSense works.

Isn't this starting to sound a lot like PayPal? Who knows, they could even offer a Google branded Mastercard "debit card" like PayPal's ATM/Debit Card — after all, the domain googlemastercard.com is registered to Google too.

If this is indeed what they are planning, it would make sense for Google Checkout to tie into Google Analytics so website owners can easily track with certainty how their AdWords campaign is directly affecting sales — right through the checkout process.

Maybe one day Google will even provide an inventory management solution with an API so websites can have their inventory in Google Base and on their own website without double entry.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Does light have mass?

The short answer is "no", but it is a qualified "no" because there are odd ways of interpreting the question which could justify the answer "yes". Light is composed of photons so we could ask if the photon has mass. The answer is then definitely "no": The photon is a massless particle. According to theory it has energy and momentum but no mass and this is confirmed by experiment to within strict limits. Even before it was known that light is composed of photons it was known that light carries momentum and will exert a pressure on a surface. This is not evidence that it has mass since momentum can exist without mass. [ For details see the Physics FAQ article What is the mass of the photon? ]. Sometimes people like to say that the photon does have mass because a photon has energy E = hf where h is Planck's constant and f is the frequency of the photon. Energy, they say, is equivalent to mass according to Einstein's famous formula E = m
6 comments
Read more

Play against Xbox360 gamer on PC in Vista

Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates on Tuesday announced a cross-platform gaming service that integrates games played on cell phones, Xbox 360 consoles and the upcoming Windows Vista operating system. The "Live Anywhere" service will be available as part of Windows Vista, Microsoft's next-generation PC operating system. The consumer version is scheduled for release early next year. "It means that you have one online community," Gates said in a news conference. "This platform can really unleash developers to do amazing new things." The system would extend the company's existing Xbox Live service for the Xbox 360 console into millions of Internet-enabled PCs and cellular phones. No pricing information on the new service was announced. In recent months, Microsoft has been pushing a number of online services that it hopes will boost revenue as markets for its traditional software become increasingly saturated. The company expects to make money off s
9 comments
Read more

Hackers biting Apple

Hackers are increasingly focusing on Apple's Mac OS X, and the number of newly discovered vulnerabilities has surged. Such a switch could mean big implications for Apple's user base, which has traditionally not had to concern itself too much over security. It's been an impressively quiet year so far on the PC virus and worm front, and hackers seem to be focusing their attention elsewhere. One such area is Apple's Mac OS X. Once mostly ignored by malware developers, there appears to be a growing interest in this "alternative" OS. Details Have you noticed the dearth of serious PC virus and worm threats out there lately? Well, it isn't a figment of your imagination -- according to vnunet.com, viruses are no longer the top security threat . While serious attacks are still likely to emerge, the bottom has apparently fallen out of the PC antivirus market -- just as Microsoft begins a big push into the security market. One cause of this drop-off is solidif
6 comments
Read more