Monthly Archives: June 2006

Google Checkout: Why will users use it?

29 Thursday Jun 2006

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Google announced Google Checkout today, and all the world’s a buzz about it. But like TechCrunch, I’m not sure yet why end users would use it.

Now, I see a huge reason why merchants will use it. Merchants who use AdWords (which is pretty much everybody) will get the little shopping cart “I accept Google Checkout” icon next to their ad. And that is huge advantage. With Google’s very stark search results pages, a little icon does do a lot to attract attention. And of course, the more clicks you get on your ad, the higher your ad tends to float…

Forget the cheaper transaction fees ($0.20 per + 2%) or the credit against those transaction fees that AdWords users get. That doesn’t really amount to much unless a lot of customers actually use Google Checkout. The real merchant benefit is this little icon which will make their ad much more noticeable on the page.

But again, why would customers use it?  There have been a lot of online wallets before (like Yahoo) and none of them have taken off. Paypal is not a simple online wallet and, I think, has real benefit to end users (direct person-to-person money transfer). Even then, most customers’ interaction with Paypal is just a place to enter their credit card so someone else can receive money. In the case of Google Checkout, the end user can’t do simply that. They have to use their Google info to pay.

 So far, I only see two reasons that end users will use it:

  1. They are intrigued by that little icon next to all the merchants that they see, and they decide to sign up for it.
  2. They want to use it just because it’s Google.

Will it work?  I don’t know. The public uses a lot of Microsoft stuff just because it’s Microsoft, but then again, they own our OS and browser.

Anyway, I can see a lot of merchants integrating with it to get the little icon on their ads, but not getting a lot of transactions through it, unless Google provides more end user benefits.

Update: John Tokash has written a great review. He thinks Google Checkout’s shielding of your email address has a ton of value, but note how it will only forward the email to your gmail account. Tricky…

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Digg 3.0 launches, but where’s the controversy?

26 Monday Jun 2006

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As TechCrunch reports, Digg 3.0 launches on Monday, but amid all this hype (and the hype from the Netscape launch), I'm left to wonder what happened to all the controversy around the forevergeek story?

Let me say first that the the Digg changes do look fantastic and should make Digg that much cooler. Great job!

The attention span of the American people is already unbelievably short, but the attention span of the blogging community has got to be record-breakingly short. Both Digg and TechMeme demonstrate this everyday, with stories that sit at the top of the queue for a mere hours, before being completely ignored forever. It's always hard to tell what's real and what's worthless with all the hype that the community pushes around.

Warren Buffet gives it up to Bill Gates. Bravo!

26 Monday Jun 2006

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Everyone is commending Warren Buffet and Bill Gates for their philanthropic efforts. I don’t know who am to commend them as well, but bravo!

A major problem we have in this capitalist society is that wealth accumulates. Everybody knows this (except the trickle-down supporters and complete free-market purists) and what you’re left with a totally unbalanced society where people like Buffet collect ridiculous amounts of wealth. He’s an example of how you can use money to make more money without actually producing anything.

So I’m ecstatic hear that he’s giving away so much. That’s the only way that the poorest in the world will get help because the free-market won’t do it.

Now if we can only get the Waltons to do it. Sam left all his money to his kids and they pretty much just sit on it.

Yahoo! Local supporting microformats

21 Wednesday Jun 2006

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Titles says it all.

I’m curious to see what mashups are going to come out of that…

I think it’s a great move for the decentralized-data proponents, clearly. Now, we’ll be able to index, search, and organize the data more easily (but frankly, anyone who really wanted to could have scraped it before because the HTML has to be consistently formatted).

However, the problem with review sites even as far-reaching as Yahoo! Local is that there is still way too few reviews. Cruising through the site, I would bet that only a single digit percentage of small businesses in my area are reviewed. And I live in the Bay Area, where there is more density of reviews than pretty much anywhere. We still need to figure out a way to get people to enter their opinions into the computer. Let’s see Yahoo tackle that one.

Compared to that, indexing and reformatting are totally easy.

But I’m not really complaining; it’s still good news.

Netscape can make Digg popular

15 Thursday Jun 2006

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So the news today is that Netscape is launching a "Digg killer". (Note how the entry used to be say "Digg-like site" instead of "Digg killer". Gotta love the sensational headlines!)

OK, ok, I went to www.netscape.com this morning, and I was shocked to find out that it had a Google Pagerank of 9. Wow. Who still goes to Netscape? No one I know ever thinks about Netscape. Shows you how much I know about stuff.

Tech Crunch has some interesting things to say about it, but I think it's missing a big part about it. It's not really about the features or even the number of page views that Netscape.com gets. The interesting thing about this launch is that AOL/Netscape have the opportunity to reach a completely different audience than Digg. The editorial panel (who are getting slammed by the community purists out there) can guide the stories to of more popular interest than geeky interest.  And that's very important.  If they can get the mainstream market to vote on stories, and build a community around that, then they have something.

Check out Digg anytime and the top stories are the same: product launches, tech company announcements, or freakish stories of the truly weird. I know it might just totally suck, but people want to see stories about Britney's raging hormones and Brangelina's baby.

Despite the popularity of Digg in certain circles, the vast majority of people have not heard of it. And with the demographic that Digg currently has, it will never have the mass appeal that will attract the non-geeks out there. That's where the "evil" editorial panel is valuable: you can guide the direction of the stories, and therefore, guide the direction of the demographic that you attract.  And after you build up enough of that demographic, the editorial panel can step aside and let the community do it's magic.

You know who could do it better? I think CNN.com, actually, because they have the stories, they have the offline brand, and they also have a 9 Pagerank. And strangely, they also are owned by AOL-Time Warner.  Hmmm…. Conspiracy?

Google killing the Internet?

11 Sunday Jun 2006

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Interesting article at the Motley Fool about Google’s effect on the Internet.

Do I believe it? No, and I don’t think Seth Jayson believes it either. I bet he’s likes making controversial statements just to drive traffic, like a lot of journalists/bloggers do (like John Dvorak for PCMag and Skip Bayless at ESPN.com).

But, no, clearly Google isn’t killing the Internet, but they aren’t the champions of all that is good and wholesome in this world either (“the hype machine is all around you”).

Anyway, interesting read.

Google Spreadsheets falls short

06 Tuesday Jun 2006

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Now, Homestead has as a fairly complex AJAX application for page editing called SiteBuilder Lite. I know it well and I know that while AJAX is really easy, really good AJAX is difficult.  And at that level, I appreciate what Google has done with Google Spreadsheets.  It’s a good feat of engineering.

I’m also a very experienced Excel user. I’m no great fan of MS, but I recognize that Excel is one awesome piece of software. In my humble opinion, it’s the best thing they have and is really indispensible in pretty much everything that I do, and everything that businesses (small and large) do.  So after watching the videos on Google Blogoscoped (I have to admit I haven’t played with Google Spreadsheets myself, as I didn’t get an invitation), it’s really obvious that MS has nothing to worry about.

Why?

  • Philipp Lenssen has a miserable time dealing with sorting data (can’t deal with header rows) and inserting data. (Starting at 1:28 in the first video)
  • While the formula list is extensive, the interface for dealing with them is really weak (especially it’s issues with reselecting cells for use in a formula). (5:22 in the first video)
  • No graphing capabilities.
  • Because I’ve only seen the video, I don’t know what the keyboard shortcuts are, but in Excel, keyboard interface is very important.
  • From the video, I can’t tell if formulas are translated relatively when copied.  I assume so, because if not, it is completely unusable.
  • Automatic column resizing (double click on a column border to resize the column to its minimal width).

And those are, to me, the most blatant things missing that almost all Excel users will miss. I won’t even go into the stuff that I use everyday that are missing (pivot tables, filters, cross-tab & cross-document references, borders, mapping cells to DB queries, etc).

To be fair, the collaboration is cool and could be useful in some situations, but I think it’s inadequate for most business applications.

TechCrunch lists a bunch of other AJAX spreadsheets and I still have to check them out. It’s been a while since I’ve played with them. Michael Arrington missed Tracker from Jotspot, so check that out, too.

Of course, this is just the first release and Google could make it better. But will they do that?  Or will this be one of those projects that sits on the Google Labs forever? I don’t know if Google cares enough about this to really take on Excel, but we’ll just have to see.