Search engine quietly unveils payment service
Google is adding e-commerce transaction capabilities to its Google Base service, providing a platform for buyers to purchase items from sellers using credit cards.
The feature effectively turns Google into an online e-commerce platform for store operators. It could put the organization into direct competition with eBay and the Craigslist online classifieds network by offering merchants to host product descriptions and use Google Base to handle the actual transaction.
For buyers, this feature will provide a convenient and secure way to purchase Google Base items by credit card. For sellers, this feature integrates transaction processing with Google Base item management, two Google managers said in a blog posting on the Google Base Blog.
The plan is in its initial stages and only a "small number" of sellers are involved, but Google plans to extend its availability over the coming months, according to the blog posting.
Google Base, which the company has been testing publicly since November 2005, is a service designed as a funnel for users to post all kinds of content to the search engine’s index.
Google Base is meant as a complement to the company’s Web crawler, which goes out and indexes content from Web sites. With Google Base, users can feed the index with information the Web crawler may miss or not be able to fetch.
Since a portion of the items posted on Google Base are for sale, Google has decided to facilitate those transactions. “To help users more easily purchase and sell Google Base items, we are planning to enable people to buy items on Google Base using their Google Accounts,” wrote Google officials Chetan Patel, engineering manager, and Stephen Stukenborg, product manager.
Google Accounts are free and only require that users provide a valid e-mail address and a password.
The Google account is currently used to handle transactions for Google’s video store and allows users to pay for professional versions of the Google Earth application and accepts credit card payment from all major providers.
Google Base is currently in beta and offers users to store and host all kinds of information, ranging from recipes, cars and jobs to charities and classified ads.
However, it is not clear if this is still Google’s plan for Google Base, considering the service is becoming an e-commerce platform on which transactions will take place. With the change, it seems to be morphing from a data repository designed to feed Google’s search services into an online marketplace in which buyers and sellers will meet, similar in nature to eBay.
The introduction of Google Base last year caused speculation about the service’s potential to compete with auction and e-commerce websites such as Ebay.
The inclusion of a purchase option offers further proof that the search giant is closing in on Ebay’s territory.
The Google Base announcement is part of a larger effort from Google to seed its services, where appropriate, with online billing and payment capabilities, according to another official Google blog posting.
Looking ahead, we want to continue building payment services that meet the needs of Google users and advertisers. We expect to add payment functionality to Google services where our users need a way to buy online, wrote Benjamin Ling, product manager and Tom Oliveri, product marketing manager at the official Google blog.
A Google spokeswoman said the concept of Google Base remains the same, and declined to elaborate on the e-commerce plans beyond the blog posting.