Google Holds Party to Protest EBay's Ban on Google Checkout

Head over to cnet for an interesting article on google's latest action to protest eBay's ban of Google checkout; they're throwing a party!

Ebay still claims that a year of operation is not long enough to prove the payment service is trustworthy. For once, I actually see where eBay is coming from (a little). EBay has had an increasingly negative brand connotation with fraud. If they allowed sellers to use google checkout, and checkout screwed up a bunch of payments, it would reflect highly negatively to those many buyers. Many buyers would not understand that eBay really had nothing to do with it.

With all the bad press lately that Google Checkout is getting in the UK—decling credit cards, double charging, and not allowing withdrawls—there might be some validity to eBay's claims.

Eventually, I hope eBay caves. I'm not a huge fan of Google Checkout, but I do think it's going to be increasingly necessary. See my post on Google Checkout's Effect on Hits and Sales for more info.