
Google Checkout Closing Down on Nov. 20th - tephra
https://support.google.com/checkout/sell/answer/3080449
======
JohnBooty
I can't imagine ever building something that relies on a Google service at
this point.

There is a lot of collateral damage when they do things like this, damage that
hurts them when even when it comes to developers like me who've never written
a single line of code that integrates with Google Checkout.

~~~
przemelek
Yeah, but how many business was using Google Checkout as only method of
payment? This decision will hurt only those businesses. Rest of businesses
using Google Checkout will remove one of payments method. Not a big deal, and
we may guess that this method was probably not so popular already.

~~~
spoiledtechie
My startup for a time being was only using Google Checkout. Here lies the
problem. Can't trust Google with building APIs when they reorganize.

This is surprising to me, but I wonder if Google Maps could close down....

~~~
gwern
> I wonder if Google Maps could close down....

No. Google has bought what must be dozens of companies at this point just to
support and improve Maps (Waze being the latest), it's reportedly profitable &
popular, with the continued rise of mobile I'd expect it to become more
important, and my little survival analysis
([http://www.gwern.net/Google%20shutdowns](http://www.gwern.net/Google%20shutdowns))
gives it 87% odds of surviving to May 2018 (which IMO is too low).

~~~
doubt_me
Also there are a bunch of government people who work on it I think.

I saw a bunch of public linkedIn profiles with NSA analysts and people in the
private sector with google maps listed as experience for whatever reason

~~~
josephkern
Google maps and Google earth are used extensively for imagery analysis and
intelligence work. They aren't working with the maps team so much as using it
as a tool.

------
badclient
I think failures of projects such as this can be attributed to wrongly
applying lean principles instead of coming out with a more complete offering.
Checkout never really matured as a product and therefore made for a poor
PayPal or merchant account alternative.

~~~
sounders
As a former Google Checkout/Wallet employee, this is completely right. When
Checkout was first released, companies would get free AdWords credit to sign
up and use the service. Also, non-profits got free processing. After this
initial release and push to have this product adopted, nothing was done to
move it forward. There were no updates and improvements made. The only changes
were when patches and bug fixes for problems that affected a large amount of
customers (not surprising since it is impossible to fix every issues that
affects every customer, but when you are dealing with a product that some
companies solely use to make a living you better try hard to fix as many
problems as possible).

~~~
jrochkind1
> _After this initial release and push to have this product adopted, nothing
> was done to move it forward._

That describes _so many_ Google services. Some live on anyway, because for
whatever reasons they meet Google's interests to keep running (Google Books).
Some don't.

------
jusben1369
If you want large companies to innovate (and I do) you can't complain bitterly
if they fail and retire a product or service in this way (which as others have
noted included a lot of notice) The flip side is big companies won't innovate
or release anything new. "No way! Have you seen how people complain if we have
to close it down? Not worth taking the chance of all that bitching"

P.S It's kind of funny that one of the alternatives they pushed at the time of
the initial announcement was Braintree who then went on to be acquired by
PayPal. Shows you how fluid/active this space is.

~~~
minikites
So why not do it faster to avoid people relying on the service for many years?
Set a private internal deadline of 6 months or a year, then if it's not as
successful as your initial goal, kill it then, not seven years later, after
tons of people have come to rely on it.

~~~
jusben1369
Again you're just craving this predictability and risk reduction which is at
loggerheads of taking chances and entering new markets.

------
skore
This actually solves a problem for me. For a long time, "finish Google
Checkout recurring billing integration" was on my todo list. Just didn't get
to it due to limited time and confusing documentation. Now I can simply close
that ticket.

~~~
Pxtl
To be fair, even PayPal screws up recurring billing.

~~~
skore
After having integrated nearly a hundred payment services: To be fair,
recurring billing is hard.

~~~
chaz
Care to share an opinion on who does it best? Or least worst?

~~~
skore
Can't really pick a best. The reason why I write that recurring billing is
hard is because the business cases vary so widely, so the answer is usually:
It depends (on your location, userbase, what you're selling...). I started out
writing a couple of integrations and you think "hey, why are there so many
processors, that's unnecessary!". And then you do a couple dozen and you start
to see the picture.

I CAN definitely tell you how to spot the worst, though. In general, when you
read the documentation and get the creeping feeling like the API was written
for one big client (and their weird business logic) and then they just
packaged it up and resold it, badly.

Funnily enough, Google Checkout seemed to be like that to me - for instance,
usually you have two things to specify: Time unit and amount of your billing
cycle, like "recur every 4 days". Google Checkout didn't do that, no no, much
too simple. They only had a time unit - one of: daily, weekly, semi_monthly,
monthly, every_two_months, quarterly, yearly.

And that's not the most complex "let us structure time awkwardly" example I
have seen over the years. Other services only allow for "days" as time unit
and you have to figure out a way to do monthly billing that doesn't just keep
running away. My favorite so far was the one where it's basically "day, week,
month, quarter, half-year and year". The values for that? D, W, M, Q, _6_ , Y.
Can't make this stuff up.

Other red flags: No English documentation, no public documentation,
documentation that specifies variables without data types, unsafe notification
functions (not even a shared secret) or downright exotic "security" (I have
seen black-box .dll files distributed as security callbacks... oh the
horror)... I could go on.

~~~
yardie
If it's any consolation my bank pays off my credit card every 30 days. When I
signed up the credit card would get payed on the 1st of the month. Over the
years that date has drifted to now be the 20th. So even the big players
haven't solved this recurring payment problem.

~~~
Pxtl
I still think that offering "every N days" and "Nth day of the month" would
cover 99% of use-cases. The big problem I ran into was when my credit-card
expired, PayPal paid a recurring bill late as it had to do an "e-cheque" that
had a long delay on it. So the payment happened late.

The WTF happened the next month, after I fixed the credit card issue - every
future bill had the same long delay on it. Somehow their "Pxtl pays on X day
of the month" had gotten shifted. So I was getting late notifications _every
month_.

------
muzz
This is nothing new, the Nov 20 date was well-known back in May:

[http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/20/google-checkout-for-
merch...](http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/20/google-checkout-for-merchants-to-
be-retired-on-nov-20/)

------
sdfjkl
Which prompts the question - should you bother signing up for Google Wallet
(if applicable, i.e. digital goods only). Since that may just end up suffering
the same fate.

~~~
msvan
I think it's safe to say that Google will not be getting out of payments any
time soon. Wallet is already tied into the enormous Play Store, so they
certainly have a healthy userbase, and seeing as Google primarily is a digital
services company it makes more sense for them to not target physical goods.

~~~
mh-
I don't think one should read much into them needing Wallet internally.

Google needing to accept credit card transactions for the Play Store is almost
tangential to the service: offering a supported API to 3rd party merchant-
users for processing digital goods transactions.

The latter involves risk assessment, underwriting, customer support,
maintaining card association/acquirer relationships, so on.

------
bcx
This is insanely bad timing. They should shut it down in January of 2014 after
all the E-commerce retailers make all their money.

No one in Ecommerce wants to touch their tech stack during the only quarter
that matters to them.

[edit] Apparently the shutdown was announced in May. Regardless, it probably
would have been better to shut it down in September, than right before Cyber
Monday.

------
anderspetersson
Google Checkout has been depreciated since May. It's not like this come as a
suprise.

~~~
jrochkind1
the word is 'deprecated'.

'depreciated' is a different word.

~~~
seldo
<3

------
kyledrake
If you think Google shuts down APIs this quickly and casually now, wait until
after the stock market bubble bursts.

~~~
muzz
This is old news from months ago. The Nov 20 date was mentioned back in May:

[http://www.slashgear.com/google-checkout-to-be-retired-
novem...](http://www.slashgear.com/google-checkout-to-be-retired-
november-20-20282862/)

------
jessaustin
Title switching to _slightly_ less informative "Retiring Google Checkout
Announcement" in 3, 2, 1...

------
pawn
I'm still annoyed that iGoogle is going away. I've tried some alternatives and
still haven't found one I like as well. And now it reminds me every day that
its going away. Ugh.

~~~
marban
Which parts of iGoogle (fragments) did you actually use?

~~~
pawn
I use it mostly for RSS feeds, which come in a surprising variety of formats
that not all of iGoogle's would-be replacers can handle. I also have a weather
app, the Gmail app, and I like that I can read at least a portion of some
stories directly within it without going to the website.

------
nateberkopec
This is probably because requestAutocomplete has been moved into Chrome Beta,
and will probably feature tight Wallet integration.

[http://www.chromium.org/developers/using-
requestautocomplete](http://www.chromium.org/developers/using-
requestautocomplete)

~~~
alttab
More likely was Checkout With Amazon.

~~~
tehwebguy
I don't think Checkout with Amazon has affected them at all. Checkout was
closed to new signups since May 20th (from the article), and Wallet has been
the digital-goods alternative for longer than that.

My guess would be that operating a physical goods processing company is a huge
drain on the resource Google hates providing most: customer service.

Payment disputes are a pain, especially for physical goods. Some level of
mediation is required when someone has purchased a physical good but has a
dispute. But with digital goods you can just tell the seller to eat it
(digital good, no actual cost loss)

~~~
sounders
Google never had great customer service for this product. There were less than
five people (customers often called this out since they would submit multiple
help tickets and the same people would respond) and they never wanted to
devote money to better customer service since the product wasn't maintained.
Thus companies didn't want to adopt a below par product with bad customer
service compounding the problem.

------
kunai
While Checkout was deprecated for months, this marks the fourth in several
huge shutdowns by Google. Reader, iGoogle, AOSP, and now Checkout. Not to
mention their 3E mantra with companies like Sparrow and QuickOffice.

Is there any way that Google can even be thought of as not evil anymore?

I'm slowly shifting everything away from Google. I'm using an iPhone 3G as my
main smartphone; switched to DuckDuckGo as my search engine, and have switched
my email to private hosting for anything confidential and Outlook for public
email.

There's really nothing they could do, good or bad, to get me back at this
point. They've proven, time and time again, that they don't care about the
customer, and frankly, I'm tired of it.

~~~
wmf
It's a bit of an exaggeration to say that AOSP was shut down.

~~~
kunai
Well, without Google's proprietary Play Services, it's practically unusable by
itself.

------
tedks
Checkout isn't mentioned on Gwern's predictions for google product closure:
[http://www.gwern.net/Google%20shutdowns](http://www.gwern.net/Google%20shutdowns)

I hope he updates the page now that we have this additional data point, I'd
love to see how his predictions performed.

~~~
mortehu
That's because his post is newer than the announcement that Checkout would
close. It was probably in his "Dead products" list.

~~~
gwern
It's actually in the followup list. I added it 152 days ago (21 May 2013) when
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5740447](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5740447)
hit HN announcing the closure of Checkout in November, but that apparently was
after I closed down data collection so I could finalize the analysis. (Wow,
did I finish that analysis that long ago?)

From my notes, I'm confused about how to treat it. The discussion in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5740447](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5740447)
among various HNers suggests that it's sorta like Checkout is becoming Google
Wallet, but also sorta not, so I'm not sure whether to consider this one of
the transition/renamed products or whether Checkout was killed and Wallet
happens to have some similar functionality.

------
abritishguy
This isn't "news", I was notified months ago.

------
aviraldg
Scared, shocked and confused for a moment while I thought Google was shutting
down _Takeout_ (which would've been a huge step backward.) This is okay (it's
been superseded by Google Wallet anyway.)

~~~
makomk
It's apparently been superseded by Google Wallet for digital goods and
discontinued with no replacement for everything else, if I'm reading the
announcement right?

~~~
arkitaip
\---

No, Google is not offering a replacement processing solution for physical
goods and services. We’ve partnered with three premier players in the payments
industry to offer alternatives for your eCommerce needs. The links below will
guide you to more detailed information about each offering, including
negotiated discounts for Checkout users:

Payment Processing: Braintree Payments

Hosted storefront: Shopify

Email invoicing: Freshbooks

\---

Increasingly often I'm associating Google with poor customer service, poor
design and being indifferent to user worries when discontinuing products. Not
sure they realize the harm they are causing to their brand, even in the eyes
of people who don't actually use the affected products.

~~~
noir_lord
Google have gone from (in my opinion) almost flawless execution to a complete
mess, they do stuff that drives me away on an almost daily bases.

For example.

I've signed into my Gmail and then visit youtube "Do you want to create a
Google+ profile" NO "Ok, we'll ask again later".

Sign into the admin account for google apps I run for a charity I volunteer at
while signed into my work account "connect these two accounts?" NO "Ok, we'll
ask later".

Reset my android phone, "Play" doesn't work because their is a blocking modal
accept terms dialog that isn't on screen, I have to swipe close play then re-
open it.

Still can't switch primary domain on a google apps account without setting up
a new one, migrating data over and shutting down old one.

Asking me for my mobile number as a 2nd fallback for my password, NO, if I
give you that you already know my android phones number and now you know
without a shadow of a doubt who my work account belongs to (it's the
obsequiousness that gets to me).

Catchall email address still don't work for no apparent reasons.

Documentation is an utter and complete mess for Google Apps (referring to
multiple versions of the google apps interface, which change about once an
hour anyway).

\------

I don't want a google+ account, I don't want to connect all my google accounts
as some are work, some are private and some belong to charities and such I
volunteer for.

I don't want you to ask me for other personal data _all the time_.

I will stop using all google services soon if this continues down that path,
It's my business I can use anything I want and the level of crap is fast
approaching moving all my stuff back in house.

I suspect I'm not the only one who feels like this.

~~~
Kequc
People so vocal about these types of frustrations are the same people who keep
refusing to just unify Google's services. You have multiple Google accounts so
link them then that's the end of it.

There are much more important things to worry about like Youtube's copyright
policies.

By being driven away, what you mean is they are doing things to move forward
and you want it to stay the way it was. Since that isn't going to happen you
are annoyed and want to bash Google's reputation.

Android, Google Docs, Hangouts, Maps, and yes, Google+ are all amazing free
products. Google Checkout is going away because Google Wallet is their new
thing. The company is fine and their reputation is fine. A couple of stubborn
people are being left behind in a sea of "do this now" notifications because
they keep not doing them. Sorry to be so brash. But each of your accounts
still remain "separate" after you link them. There are extensive privacy
settings for every piece of information you put online using Google+ so it is
not a chore to keep charity work separate from work separate from personal.
It's actually quite elegant.

I don't understand, is it because you are used to using aliases? Why do you
want to fight this so hard?

~~~
anon1385
I think this comment is a great example of the disconnect. You (and I presume
a majority of the people working for Google) are not actually able to even
comprehend why people might want multiple accounts, or to have separate
accounts for their email and their video watching and their blog. He even
gives examples in his post, like administering an account for a charity
organisation, but somehow things like that are unimaginable to people in the
Google bubble.

It's pretty worrying when a company can't even understand the basic
motivations behind the actions of their users: how can they possibly weigh up
the costs and benefits of forcing account consolidation when they can't even
imagine the use cases where consolidating accounts doesn't make sense for
users.

~~~
jamesaguilar
I doubt the person you're replying to works at google. His profile says he is
a ruby developer and as far as I know we don't use that. Also, his attitude is
not particularly common within google.

~~~
anon1385
I didn't mean to imply that I think he works for Google.

>Also, his attitude is not particularly common within google.

So the majority of Google engineers disagree with the policies of the
management? Do people internally push back against this stuff (trying to force
account consolidation and making everything part of G+), or are people too
afraid to speak out? If people aren't happy with it, how far does it have to
go before morale drops and people start looking for other jobs?

~~~
skybrian
Google is a big place and there's lots going on, both good and bad. There is
lively internal debate and plenty of pushback, but there are also good reasons
to stay even when you disagree about a particular issue. There are people who
leave, but someone who's unhappy might just switch to a different team.

------
seldo
I think the difference between "old Google" and "current Google" is that old
Google would have been honest and said "the closest available equivalents are
Paypal and Amazon Payments". Instead the migration partnership (presumably
with a rev share) is Braintree, which while capable is not really the same
sort of product.

It sucks to have to close things down, but sometimes you do, and they gave
everybody 6+ months of notice to migrate back in May, but being disingenuous
about the best alternative is mealy-mouthed and "un-Googly".

------
blinks
Specifically:

* Merchants selling digital goods may transition to Google Wallet for digital goods

* Merchants selling through Google-hosted marketplaces (e.g. Google Play) will be unaffected

* Merchants selling physical goods will need to switch to third-party alternatives (see below)

\--
[https://support.google.com/checkout/sell/answer/3080449](https://support.google.com/checkout/sell/answer/3080449)

------
coldcode
The only thing Google will never shut down is ads.

------
integricho
There are many webdev learning books that used Google Checkout and built an
app using their service as an example.. It will be fun for people reading the
book after a couple of years about a service that doesn't exists anymore,
it'll be like reading some sacred scrolls from times forgotten by today's
humans..

------
DigitalSea
Google are generating a lot of uncertainty in their product offerings lately.
To innovate you need to know when to call it quits and move onto something
else. It's quite clear Google Checkout wasn't the success that Google had
hoped it would be and are closing it down to divert resources and cash
somewhere else where it might be better utilised. People will complain about
this situation, but would you rather Google kept a service running just to
appease a few die-hards when it's probably costing them money?

We need stronger and tougher competition in the online payments space. Paypal
seriously can't be the only globally working payment and checkout substitute
around, maybe Google has a similar service that's stronger and more feature
packed up their sleeves? I hope so.

------
joeblau
While this seems bad from the title, it's actually pretty good. They are
consolidating redundant systems into one system: Google Wallet.

~~~
DanBC
But Google wallet can't be used if you sell physical things.

~~~
hrkristian
Yet... I'm Norwegian so the Play Store only contains apps, as such I have no
idea if ordering Nexus devices means using Google Wallet or something else
entirely, what's the deal there?

------
talles
What is the difference between google wallet and google checkout again?

------
azifali
Thanks for eating up more than $3000 from my company, Google Checkout.

------
clarky07
I'm just starting a new SaaS project. Google was immediately checked off as a
source of anything for the project as it is too hard to know if the service
will exist in a year.

------
Thiz
It will be replaced by 'Google Bitcoin'.

------
ck2
Didn't google give out millions in coupons for using their checkout last
holiday season? (maybe it was 2011)

------
gcatalfamo
I'd say that signs of an imminent merge with Google Wallet were clearly
visible throughout the year...

~~~
alttab
Except they arent merging. Goolge is no longer sulporti g pyshical goods.

~~~
gcatalfamo
"Merchants selling digital goods may transition to Google Wallet for digital
goods"

Except they are. But I'd say we are both correct.

~~~
eCa
physical != digital

------
baldfat
WOW and it is right in the middle of the Christmas RUSH! Never Depend on
Google!

------
paulhauggis
wow, I'm glad I didn't use Google checkout for anything important..

------
nsh1991
i think square has come up with a very good idea thats going to change the
payment systems

~~~
1qaz2wsx3edc
Don't worry, Google will buy them and shut them down too.

~~~
hnriot
Why would you think that? It's not like Dorsey needs the money, Square are
doing genuinely innovative things and I very much doubt they would be
interested in selling to BigCorp.

~~~
jusben1369
When you take that much VC money you either have to IPO or get acquired by
BigCorp. I doubt given Square's land grab that their underlying financials are
very attractive so that would rule out IPO for a long time. So.....

------
adamb_
If this was because checkout was a commercial failure they need to make that
public knowledge. Otherwise this does make it seem like you can't rely on any
Google product that's not part of their core offering. I'm specifically
thinking of Google Voice & Keep.

~~~
jrochkind1
How would it help you to know that it was a commercial failure? How would
knowing that change your conclusion that you can't rely on Google products?

------
tlogan
I know that a significant set of people here are saying that this is "end of
Google". Actually, this is "beginning of Google". Google _must_ focus on
things they are best at: advertisement.

The problem with their approach of having many half finished products that
they were actually helping competition: they were discovering and validating
market which is then captured by smaller companies.

And my prediction is that the following Google products will probably die out
soon:

* Google App Engine - competition is improving at rapid pace and it is hard to keep up without focus.

* Google Blogger - they will probably just make something similar under Google+

* Google Groups

Probably there is more... but these are the one I see.

~~~
marban
App Engine — are you serious? New releases every few weeks, quite a few
innovations technology-wise and essentially no freeriders. Also, I don't see a
lot of competition in terms of equivalent solutions; if at all.

~~~
tlogan
I can be wrong about App Engine. Here is my reasoning...

I think App Engine does not fit nicely into Google's grand vision: which is
mobile, social, and search for advertising purposes. So they need to be become
profitable soon or they will be shut down.

However they lack enterprise customers and without enterprise and corporate
customers it very hard to make things profitable.

~~~
yeukhon
This is wrong. AE is profitable. They have invested so much into AE. Every
year at I/O since AE was launched, Google has been presenting the progress in
AE. Many of the top companies today are using either AE or EC2 (or both). It
is impossible for them to drop AE. They might consider moving away at some
point, but in the next 5-10 years it is impossible. But the longer the service
remains running, the harder it is for both Google and customers to move away.
Eventually, if someone crazy, more competitive comes along, and when customers
fall behind they will begin a deprecation and that deprecation period will be
years long. When that does happen, Google is no longer attractive. Google will
not profit anymore.

