Comments on: The Tenants of Google http://stevezeidner.com/the-tenants-of-google Just another WordPress weblog Sun, 22 Aug 2010 13:33:15 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: Josh http://stevezeidner.com/the-tenants-of-google#comment-323 Josh Wed, 06 Jan 2010 16:41:59 +0000 http://stevezeidner.com/?p=463#comment-323 Interesting note about the "be an advocate for the user". Maybe that is an American thing, because Google Turkey has not been so for people who tried to purchase Google Adwords to advertise their Christian websites. It almost always took extra work (such as contacting Google USA) to get the site accepted in the first place, with odd excuses being levied; and in one instance the site was blacklisted as "evil" by Google, though the content was completely clean. But once the effort was made, the Adwords worked fine. (The one exception I'm aware of is the Christian radio station in Ankara.) I guess Google needs to let their Turkish employees in on their values. :) Interesting note about the “be an advocate for the user”. Maybe that is an American thing, because Google Turkey has not been so for people who tried to purchase Google Adwords to advertise their Christian websites. It almost always took extra work (such as contacting Google USA) to get the site accepted in the first place, with odd excuses being levied; and in one instance the site was blacklisted as “evil” by Google, though the content was completely clean. But once the effort was made, the Adwords worked fine. (The one exception I’m aware of is the Christian radio station in Ankara.) I guess Google needs to let their Turkish employees in on their values. :)

]]> By: Steve http://stevezeidner.com/the-tenants-of-google#comment-322 Steve Fri, 27 Nov 2009 13:19:15 +0000 http://stevezeidner.com/?p=463#comment-322 Rick...good call on Google checkout - it sounds like they did not follow their tenants on that one. Has Paypal treated you a little better since you switched back? Rick…good call on Google checkout – it sounds like they did not follow their tenants on that one. Has Paypal treated you a little better since you switched back?

]]> By: Rick http://stevezeidner.com/the-tenants-of-google#comment-321 Rick Fri, 27 Nov 2009 03:08:37 +0000 http://stevezeidner.com/?p=463#comment-321 The only thing I think they are lacking on is google checkout... the selling side of things. They started out offering it free, then it was free to match your adwords fees, so essentially still free, if you were paying for adwords already... but now they raised there rates in May 2009 to 2.9% and dropped the adwords promotions...which is just as bad as paypal. It's never really offered something that paypal or a real merchant account can't do. I do appreciate the open API's and the functionality, but at the same time I find myself frustrated with the lack of usefulness of the google checkout interface itself. It could really benefit from some better tools for processing orders within that interface. I don't see any innovation at all, just a lack of features compared to the competition. One of the big annoyances is that you can download a CSV of your orders, but the dang file doesn't have any shipping info in it, just name and order info... which makes it useless, I have to actually click on EACH order and copy and paste the addresses line by line into an excel file. Paypal just lets me hit the "print label" button. So why do I use it? Well... I don't, I switched back to paypal!... I only use google checkout now for pre-order or groupbuy items, because they don't hold my money hostage like paypal has in the past... with GC once a sale is made, it immediately transfers into my bank account. The only thing I think they are lacking on is google checkout… the selling side of things. They started out offering it free, then it was free to match your adwords fees, so essentially still free, if you were paying for adwords already… but now they raised there rates in May 2009 to 2.9% and dropped the adwords promotions…which is just as bad as paypal.

It’s never really offered something that paypal or a real merchant account can’t do. I do appreciate the open API’s and the functionality, but at the same time I find myself frustrated with the lack of usefulness of the google checkout interface itself. It could really benefit from some better tools for processing orders within that interface. I don’t see any innovation at all, just a lack of features compared to the competition. One of the big annoyances is that you can download a CSV of your orders, but the dang file doesn’t have any shipping info in it, just name and order info… which makes it useless, I have to actually click on EACH order and copy and paste the addresses line by line into an excel file. Paypal just lets me hit the “print label” button. So why do I use it? Well… I don’t, I switched back to paypal!… I only use google checkout now for pre-order or groupbuy items, because they don’t hold my money hostage like paypal has in the past… with GC once a sale is made, it immediately transfers into my bank account.

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