Entering a Market Not So Easy, Even for Google...

Title: "Google Checkout sees poor customer satisfaction"
Author: Jacqui Cheng
Source: ars technica

While Google checkout penetrated the market for online credit card transaction servicing rather quickly, gaining around 6% of the market in just a few months, customers seems to be marginally satisfied with the product. Market research shows that google's service simply isn't living up to the expectations of typical early adopters. Only 18.8% of Checkout users reported a "good" service, compared to Paypal's 44.2% satifaction. Cheng reports, "Google appears to have some major improvements to make to the overall user experience before being able to deal some serious blows to PayPal's market share."

While this may sound a bit like doomsday for google fair attempt, I really think this is only the beginning. A product that struggles at first, needing improvements is simply part of Google's strategy. It is not at all uncommon for Google to release an "ok" beta version, assuming their core users will pick it up. They use such customer loyalty to find out what exactly people want and will use in a product. They've been doing this with gmail for a few years now. As an early adopter of gmail, i can tell you, the product has seen a great deal of improvement. Google Docs and Spreadsheets is also in the early stages of this transformation. I really think this is good agile software development. Why spend more than you need to on man hours for features that people wont use? It is much more efficient to create a simple, flexible core product and then improve it.

If there is one thing Google users are good at it is giving honest, useful feedback. More than anyone, Google does an excellent job of facilitating this relationship.
As they do with most Google products, Slashdotter's took the time to comment on the news...

Checkout may or may not ultimately succeed. Paypal is well established and will be tough to tackle, but this is only the beginning. Expect to see more aggressive marketing of this product from Google.

peace.