They are obviously not strong in facilitating purchase transactions. However, they are the strongest in the so called "search and find" areas. Although, I wouldn't rest on my laurels if I were google, I'd say building out something from scratch in the purchase department, isn't an immediate necessity.

I do think that Google is too heavily reliant on text ads as its lone income. It seems that online marketing goes through phases, with new forms of advertising always popping up and being more effective than the last. Think of email marketing, which continues a slow decline in profit from a list owner perspective. Or think of how online banner ad networks were at the top of the heap. If history repeats itself, I don't imagine that textads will be the reigning king of online advertising forever.

Therefore, I do think they should diversify their revenue streams. Combining with ebay would be a quick way of doing that. Ebay'd mesh well with the google corporate image. They are both the best at what they do: I'd vote ebay the king of facilitating transactions over amazon. Further, Ebay and Google both empower the individual.
I see amazon as the microsoft of facilitating transactions by trying to control too much.

And a google-ebay combination would demote yahoo back to grade school. That'd make things interesting in the google/yahoo rivalry that's been hotting up.

• Posted by: Peter Caputa
• April 8, 2004 10:46 AM

oh... and the currency thing... here is what Seth Godin wrote in the pdf book that this article references:

He wasn't really referring to an actual currency that would compete with national currencies. For the record, I also think that is a pretty stupid idea...unless maybe they want to bring back the gold standard.

"Now that Google has a relationship with all its users and with millions of sites, it can start to truly unify the web. I think they ought to do this by inventing a web currency. And do it quickly and well, before Microsoft screws it up.
Because Google can get all the sites with plexes to cooperate, creating a standard here isn’t hard. Because they already have a toolbar, finding a platform isn’t hard. And putting something truly revolutionary in the toolbar
makes it compelling to download and install the thing.

You open an account with Google. Pay for it with a credit card or PayPal. Now, whenever you visit a site, you can use the Google toolbar to pay for
content, or small items. Suddenly, collecting a ten cent royalty to read a web page for a year is easy. Buying an mp3 or a pdf is trivial. Google keeps a penny or two per transaction. That’s enough"

• Posted by: Peter Caputa
• April 8, 2004 10:57 AM

Its time for people to stop smoking the Google crack. Google is a great search engine but its not godlike. And most users don't want to pay for content.

• Posted by: wag
• April 8, 2004 11:11 AM

You know, maybe Google should start selling crack. It's a great way to get customer loyalty.

• Posted by: Kendall Willets
• April 8, 2004 1:50 PM

you better watch using Google's name in vein! Google knows all, you know? LMAO @ google crack.

• Posted by: Peter Caputa
• April 8, 2004 1:54 PM

Well, it would go well with their next product, Google Cavity Search.

• Posted by: Kendall Willets
• April 8, 2004 2:53 PM

We've already got a fairly simple web currency with Paypal. Many sites accept donations with Paypal. I don't personally know of any that require payment via Paypal for access, but I don't think they would be very successful. As wag said above, the people typically just don't want to pay.

• Posted by: Scott Johnson
• April 8, 2004 3:47 PM

John...were you trying to allude to A9 with this post?

• Posted by: Peter Caputa
• April 15, 2004 10:27 AM

I agree with you!

• Posted by: dish network
• April 27, 2004 10:15 AM