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Google Crimes: Google Checkout is my first installment in a series that will cover all the special self-promoting crimes that Google commits. As Google is using it’s traffic from the Google main page to push it’s own services. this is unfair and may develop eventually in a monopoly of the Internet’s services by Google. Which led me to start these new series that will document Google using their search engine traffic to push their services. Examples include Google Blog Search and Google Video. For any other company this would be okay but for a company whose corporate corporate motto is “Don’t Be Evil” this situation is very different.

What is Google Checkout?

Google Checkout is Google’s challenge to eBay’s PayPal. It’s is a way to buy and sell products online. Launched on June 19th, 2006 it arrived with many promises and the anticipation that it would completely replace PayPal. It is free of charge and offers special deals in order to attract users.

Special Google Checkout Offers

Google tried first with an offer from Citibank, which gives you $5 dollars or 100 Thank You points if you sign up your Citibank credit or debit card with Google Checkout. But that didn’t seem to work. Google then proceeded to offer free $10 to be spent in participating stores if you signed up for Google Checkout. This offer was aimed at holiday shoppers and is Google’s first crime.

Google Checkout’s $10 Dollar Coupon

When Google Checkout was advertised on the Google main page it’s traffic went up tremendously. Hitwise shows that Google Checkout’s traffic shot up and dropped yet again when the link was removed.

This was an unfair use of Google’s main traffic to try to get a leg up of the competition. Though it appears to have failed that time Google didn’t give up and put up the link yet again, as reported by Search Engine Land, in a bid to try to get more users. But Google didn’t stop there.

Google Checkout Included in Products’ Search Engine Results

Google then proceeded to include Google Checkout in search engine results for products. This had been going on already with Froogle but with Google Checkout its different. Because of the problem of the reliability of certain merchants on Google Checkout. Like PayPal it still faces the problem of fraudulent merchants that cheated customers out of their money for phony products. Another problem is the fact that those are a search through Froogle and include merchants only in Google Checkout. This may have been designed to prompt merchants to sign up with Google Checkout just so they can get on those results.

But the true problem lies in the users of Google who may feel betrayed by Google if they get cheated by some merchant. Instead of running maybe a closed beta to see how users react to it and how merchants would like it they just went ahead and did it.

Why It Is A Crime

Aside from the aforementioned reasons Google has pushed Google Checkout more than any of it’s other services it seems. This new trend by Google to make bold moves in changing what has been accepted by users as a rock solid search engine to a monopoly of the Web’s services is pushing some users away. The Google tips scenario itself proved just how much self commercializing by Google would be rejected by users. With this new aggressive behavior of putting a fairly new and untrustworthy service into search engine results or the Google homepage may be dragging Google closer to the noose.

Thank You