Forgive me, but isn't this what Google Wallet was, at one point? Then at some point Google Wallet was split out into Android Pay. And now it's Google Pay? It's made all the worse by the fact that these names/logos/etc are reflected on actual physical hardware distributed to stores around the world. Those old names aren't going anywhere soon.
Google has done this so many times now (Hangouts/Allo/Messenger, anyone?) that I wonder if there is anyone behind the wheel any more.
Google has caught MMD (Microsoft Marketing Disease), in which companies endlessly rebrand and rename products that are successful, but not market-leading, in an effort to become the market leader, but end up fragmenting their own brands further by alienating existing loyal users and confusing late-adopters and casual observers who don't follow the branding news. This marketing-driven disease spreads to other parts of the business, as engineers see a rebranding as a legitimate time to break backwards-compatibility, but they aren't given the lead-time or budget for a full rework, so the new product is similar enough to the old product that it's obviously just a rehash, but different enough so that nothing that worked with the old thing will easily work with the new thing.
MMD keeps managers, marketers, product teams, and engineering leads busy, and makes executives believe progress is being made since all the metrics look good: there are tech blog articles, Twitter mentions, Hacker News threads, maybe a mainstream media hit or two; all the teams have finite task lists that are getting done; and there's an initial jump in brand awareness and new user engagement. The actual damage to the brand doesn't happen until long enough down the road that the brilliant minds who came up with the idea have collected their bonus checks, awards, and promotions, and moved onto better things.
And now the executives start talking up the need for a new marketing strategy... lather, rinse, repeat.
Google has caught MMD (Microsoft Marketing Disease)
Microsoft was exactly my first thought when I read this. "Are they pulling a SkyDrive here, and it's just rebranded Google Wallet?" And I use SkyDrive as an example because I lost count of how many times Microsoft renamed their online storage, to the point that I just gave up and used Dropbox.
It must work, or companies wouldn't do it. But it just alienates me. Is this the new boss, same as the old boss? Or a new product with new things I should take a look at? Does it work better than when I tried to use Google Wallet when I had Android? Aww, fuck it, I'll just keep using Apple Pay.
Not to try to invalidate your point (because Microsoft is definitely guilty of this practice), but SkyDrive was rebranded for legal reasons*, instead of marketing reasons.
well basically we talked about renames and live messenger actually was canceled for skype and not renamed. the other examples were just renames with/without a new ui.
I would say the difference with those examples and Pay with Google (as well as Google's other rebrands) is that Live Mesh and FolderShare really weren't being used prior to rolling them into Live Drive/SkyDrive/OneDrive (whenever those got integrated, it's been years). The rebrand was intentional to try and get them to be used more by attaching them to a more successful brand, which happened to be the one for our online storage.
Google likes taking successful products and then rebranding them out of the blue for no real reason other than to seem "integrated". Things like splitting off messaging from Hangouts, which was already an amalgamation of features and other products like Google Talk and the old messaging app. Or like Google Pay, which is an amalgamation of a bunch of other successful products like Android Pay (which was itself an amalgamation of other products like Google Wallet and Google Checkout along with certain acquisitions). With Google, it just seems like they constantly have FOMO of being on the "hot new brand".
I think Google Pay makes more sense than Android Pay for two reasons:
The first is that non-technical people don't seem to know what is Android. They know their phone is a Samsung Galaxy, LG G series or a Motorola, but most of them don't know that their phone is an Android or that Google is making the OS. It doesn't help that Google renamed the Android Market to Google Play.
So in the eyes of the everyday man, Google is a better known brand than Android.
The second reason is Fuchsia, which I believe could be Android's successor. I think Google want this OS to be everywhere; on phones, tablets, laptops, servers, IoT devices, etc, and since it will be updated and maintained directly by them, version numbers will be irrelevant for most people. In other words, there won't be a Fuchsia 1, 2, 3. It will be updated constantly like Chrome and probably named something like "Google OS".
So having a payment solution that is named Google Pay make sense when there's a possibility that Android is not Google's future on mobile (and everywhere else).
Tech names have lost the plot. We really really need to get past this "Pick a really common English word and name your brand that, so it's impossible to search for and confuses people when discussed" thing.
One of my favorite examples is looking at the Google Trends page for Google Allo [0]. Lots of initial interest at release, but since it didn't add anything to what people already was using, including Google hangouts, interest soon faded away. Google's practice of release early, release often, doesn't really work when entering a market with strong established products. Good luck getting people to try convincing their friends to switch to a different chat app they already tried and didn't like.
Google is known for attracting top engineers, but their product managers seems to be some of the worst in the industry. Where would they be without their ad cash cow? It's been years since I got exited about anything they released. I think I noticed it getting worse right around when Eric Schmidt got replaced as CEO.
At least where I live (Sweden) Google Maps is often worse than OpenStreetMap, and there are several other sites with both better aerial photography and map data. I also think Google Maps' white on gray color scheme is hard to read.
I made this as an example [0]. It's Google Maps, OpenStreetMaps, a local competitor (Hitta), and the official government map agency (Lantmäteriet) that Google used to buy their map data from according to their copyright info. Notice several features missing in Google's data, and how bland and low contrast it is in comparison. Speaking of which, try finding this road on Google Maps using your phone when the sun is shining: [1]
Google's aerial photos in the same area is from 2014 and is both lower resolution and older than the two alternatives I looked at.
I still use Google Maps quite a lot, but in my opinion they're slipping and doesn't seem to care about keeping data updated as much as having local guides reviewing restaurants and grocery stores.
Google Maps is much more than just a map display though: Things like routing, current/expected traffic or business info (opening times, busy hours, ...) are so much better than anything OSM-related services have to offer right now, especially to non-technical users. Smartphone map apps that use OSM are a lot more technical or convoluted than Google Maps sadly.
Yes, and like I said, I still use Google Maps. But I usually use maps to get an overview over an area and to orient myself, not to navigate to a business in an unknown city. And my point still stands, around here Google have the oldest data and most outdated data.
This got me thinking that I don't really know what products Microsoft even sells anymore. I know they have Windows and Office of course, but do they even still sell Windows, or is it all ad-driven revenue now? And of course they have bing.com, which is ad-driven. And Xbox, though that itself has gone through a similiar series of confusing names (Xbox 360 is Xbox 2 and Xbox One is Xbox 3?!).
> do they even still sell Windows, or is it all ad-driven revenue now?
Yes. I built a gaming PC last year and had to buy Windows 10 since I wasn't upgrading any existing computer. It's not cheap either—it was one of the high cost components of the system.
You could have used a non activated version with a free image provided by MS as the only downside now is a few customization options disabled. It shows as far as MS is willing to go to put Win 10 in people throat.
They are still making a lot of money selling Windows. Every OEM has to buy a copy of Windows.
The only difference is that now they don't charge for upgrades. Which is extremely smart because the cost of supporting people on decade old OSes probably significantly exceeds the revenues earned from consumers who are buying Windows upgrades to their existing PCs.
Oh, and enterprise licenses are the same, if I am not mistaken.
Frankly, MS not making updates free earlier was them shooting themselves in their foot.
IIRC MS enterprise licensees are charged for "software assurance", which is an annualized fee they pay for regular updates and upgrades. This looks like it's continuing with Windows 10.
On the consumer side, Microsoft would really like you to not buy a Mac. Since Mac's OS updates are free, it just makes sense that Windows is free anyway - they made very little on retail Windows sales anyway. I guess they figure they'll make their money when people upgrade laptops/desktops or buy other form-factors, e.g. 2-in-1s or tablets.
Problem there is no one knows how to pronounce it. Every day I hear two people talking, and person one says “a /zh/ ure” while person two says “uh-zhure”. Emphasis on the u or emphasis on the a.
It’s almost as bad as Ker-burr-os vs Ker-bear-os or OS 10 vs OS Ex.
Really depends on the product. They had several iterations of photos before they landed on Google photos which is excellent and industry leading but took a while.
When it comes to organization beyond shoving photos at it and hoping for the AI's best, Photos is deeply disappointing. Competitors like Fotki has nested albums 10 years ago. Photos doesn't show your device folders on the web, and can't move files locally without crashing or duplicating them.
Android Pay is worthwhile even if you never use it for payment purposes. It also holds discount/membership cards. For example, my IKEA, Jet Blue, CVS, and Walgreens cards are in there. I don't know if you use those types of things, but they don't seem to warrant the type of security a credit card would.
This nails it. At this point, I don't even bother signing up for Google services because they'll all just change or go away or whatever in a few months so what's the point?
I once heard that at Google advancement (and thus salary increase) is significantly pinned to shipping new things. As a result, nobody is incentivized to work on maintenance or improvement of existing things. Everybody wants to ship something new, so they can ride along with it up the corporate elevator.
Counterpoint: I've been promoted 5 times (last was to Director), and i've never shipped anything new, only worked on maintenance or improvement of existing things.
FYI, HN doesn't really have markdown, so that link doesn't work. Instead, generally we do something like this:
> It was probably via this Quora answer[1]
> I don't think that's entirely accurate. There are efforts to reward Product Excellence, for example, which involved UX polish, performance tuning etc.
The most Google thing to do would now be to deprecate Android pay, no longer support merchants who don't upgrade their point of sale systems, and provide no contact line for support.
And thus ensure in another 2 years, another person will be promoted to the Google global payments VP, and another product manager will think he's god's gift to solving the payments problem, and will have another product and rebranding cycle.
Happened to my android google tv from Sony, completely made it unusable , even YouTube app is not working. When Logitech did something similar everybody gone crazy about it. Google seems to be getting away with this kind of behavior every time
I had this TV and just bought a new one for Christmas. To be fair, the TV was released in mid-2010, the YouTube app was supported for over 7 years. Many other apps on the TV still worked when I got rid of it a month ago. There's a lot of valid complaints about smart TV software not being updated, but I think this is a stretch.
It wouldn't be much of a stretch to follow that line of reasoning and propose that people should never buy smart products ever again. They should instead rent them. maybe that's what Google wants also.
7 years isn't that old for a TV. I'm happy that I've bought a dumb TV, and then have a chromecast which is a small and cheap device that I can easily upgrade.
> Forgive me, but isn't this what Google Wallet was, at one point?
Not exactly, as it includes things that were never part of Wallet.
> Then at some point Google Wallet was split out into Android Pay. And now it's Google Pay?
Android Pay was a renamed acquisition that was originally intended to be merged with Wallet but was kept apart (but Wallet’s NFC payment feature was retired as Android Pay was brought online, which made it look like Wallet was being split up.)
But Google Pay seems to merge in a number of other siloed app-specific Google payment features as well.as Wallet and Android Pay (these clearly have been integrated behind the scenes for a while, since their “pay with Google” feature leveraged payment methods you had registered through any of them or Wallet or Android Pay), so this looks like the UI and branding catching up with backend integration.
- cards listed are only viewable as huge generic CC images and you can't customize either the image or even give it a name. Why this terrible skeuomorphic mess? I have different cards for different types of purchases and they all look identical and I have to scroll through them because they are huge. WTF?
- When making payments there is no quick way to select which card you want to pay with. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who sometimes uses different personal cards, credit vs debit, or company vs personal. WTF??
- There is no user purchase validation step! I just swipe my phone and transaction is done. I get this is the same as using a CC but in theory there is such a huge opportunity to improve the experience. How about popping up a thing where I confirm the purchase, even add a tip or sign for some purchases? WTF???
- Pretty much zero updates for years. WTF google????
</WTF rant>
Honestly any of these issue are almost deal breakers but I do use it mainly because I get a geeky thrill out of it still when it works. Are some of these limitations imposed by the CC companies and banks? Like Wells Fargo saying they'll only participate if Google uses the exact full size card image? Or is this just an example of insanely bad UX in a totally dysfunctional product team? I have no idea but the current app is mind-blowingly crappy.
> There is no user purchase validation step! I just swipe my phone and transaction is done. I get this is the same as using a CC but in theory there is such a huge opportunity to improve the experience. How about popping up a thing where I confirm the purchase, even add a tip or sign for some purchases? WTF???
I disagree with you here. I want the payment to be as fast and painless as possible. A "tip" screen, a "sign" screen, etc. would all be very annoying. I suppose adding these optionally somehow could work though.
On a technical note, it's not quite the same as swiping a CC. There's some authentication to start - you must authenticate on your phone (via fingerprint or pattern or whatever lock mechanism you have) before you can make a payment. In addition, a one-time token is sent instead of your actual CC number, so the retailer couldn't reuse your payment info. In other words, it's much more secure than "signing" ever was and you get some nice security benefits by using your phone as opposed to swiping a credit card.
Good points. About validation step, how about a notification that counts down and auto accepts unless you cancel or something? Never thought about it before but having a guy in a random skeezy mini mart say "3.75" then I just tap and it is done without me every seeing if he ripped me off seems sketchy. And that is more sketchy than most CC machines because usually it actually does ask you to confirm the amount which google pay does not.
Exactly. Buying with a card is like handing over your wallet for the cashier to fish out the correct amount; a new system using a phone should be taken as an opportunity to put you back in control. The only friction would be one tap to confirm. The tap could double as your action of choosing which card to pay with.
(Confirming on the vendor's reader still requires you to trust their machine, not yours.)
At least with my configuration (because I'm really not sure which parts of this are bank-driven, which are OS-driven, which are app-driven, et cetera - it's a bit of a mess) I get a notification telling me how much I paid and to where, which can be dismissed at some later point.
I used Apple Pay for the first time recently and it felt like magic. Just hover it near, choose your credit card (which had a full sized image), and then it instantly pays using Touch ID. I think some of the issues you listed with Google Pay are the same issues with Apple Pay.
I also really like WeChat Pay, very convenient, customizable, and verifiable.
Apple Pay feels very "magical" while WeChat Pay feels very "careful/customizable".
> How about popping up a thing where I confirm the purchase, even add a tip or sign for some purchases?
I may be wrong but as far as I know this simply isn't possible with the existing contactless payment protocol. That standard goes way beyond Google (and they don't command anywhere near enough of the market to make their own addition to it).
Why would anyone want to sign on a phone? Why would anyone want to sign for a credit card purchase at all?
Consider this the obligatory comment of "why do Americans want to sign for credit card purchases when PIN is so much better?". I don't even think I have a signature on my card.
I haven't even swiped or inserted my card in months, everything is contactless with my card, I'm concerned I'll forget my PIN.
> cards listed are only viewable as huge generic CC images and you can't customize either the image or even give it a name.
The generic images are only used for cards that do not participate in Android Pay, and that use the fallback mechanism for unsupported cards. Participating cards get fully branded images from the participating bank.
> When making payments there is no quick way to select which card you want to pay with.
You can apparently make app shortcuts to individual cards, if you have the Pixel launcher or a third-party launcher with similar features.
When I say generic I mean the skeuomorphic fully branded credit card images. Why would anyone want that except as a small and possibly enlargeable icon? I want "groceries", "fun", "bills", "work", etc
> Well, if you are used to physical cards, it's pretty much the same management mechanism…
Not really. I have 2 cards from the same bank and they look identical. I grabbed a sharpie and wrote on one of them so I could tell them apart. Sadly I can't do that on Apple Pay (and it sounds like Google Pay takes the same approach)—I just have to memorize the last 4 digits of one of them. Sigh.
Exactly this. The current CC situation isn't good either but at least they have an excuse because they are old as dinosaurs physical cards and there are workarounds like you mentioned (I do the exact same thing with the sharpie). Reusing them as the only way we identify payment options in the app is completely nuts.
Buyer beware. Your one Google account is trendils into everything. For example: I uploaded some clips of an old 90s show and got flagged for copyright. Now I can't upload/comment/sign into Youtube.
How does this affect Google Pay? What about Google Domains? Bleh. I don't really like all-in-accounts anymore. Much rather have separate silo'd accounts.
I agree. Over a decade ago when I was a freshman in college I participated in an AdSense click ring with my dormmates. We made $200 or so each, which was cool at that age. Within a few months we got caught and banned from AdSense. Now I have a YouTube channel with tens of thousands of viewers but I can’t monetize it at all, even though YouTube wasn’t even part of the same company as AdSense when my silly freshman experiment went down.
Sorry, why should that matter? Google doesn't trust you to honor your advertising contract because you didn't in the past and they know it because they literally caught your fraud themselves.
You seem to be arguing that a technicality should allow you to use other ad mechanisms, but that's not how real work risk analysis (or morality!) works.
You get the same treatment from banks: default on one loan and they'll tell the others (via credit reporting agencies), because that information is something they need to make good business decisions.
Actually, loans are a good example, since there is a very clear path to making things good again. Typically this involves 10 years of trouble, but that is still better than being completely in the darkness as you slowly get cut off from more and more services (as Google expands.)
> You get the same treatment from banks: default on one loan and they'll tell the others (via credit reporting agencies), because that information is something they need to make good business decisions.
At least in the US, negative events on your credit report disappear after 7 years.
True. The statute of limitations (or whatever the consumer credit regulations equivalent is called?) doesn't extend to what individual organisations already know about you.
He literally stole money from them by committing fraud. What do you think is a reasonable period of time a private company/person should wait before doing business with someone who stole from them previously?
OP isn't asking for "forgiveness" though. He seems to be arguing that a simple technicality (adsense and youtube being separate revenue mechanisms) should make it impossible for Google to enforce its existing fraud bans.
A straightforward requirement for forgiveness, even after a decade, should be at least a little bit of contrition, no?
OP should just be thankful he didn't have any legal ramifications and a permanent criminal record. Instead, he just can't make money off his youtube videos.
Completely agreed. But I don't see how that's relevant to the grandparents argument that adsense fraud shouldn't affect Youtube ad revenue.
I mean, extending your point: does the grandparent sound appropriately contrite to you? If you read that comment and had to decide whether or not to sign an ad service contract, would you?
Edit to be even clearer: OkGoDoIt literally describes the fraudulent theft of hundreds of dollars as a "silly freshman experiment"! Is that a situation you think Google should be required to forgive?
There is no valid alternative to YouTube as far as similar content creation monetization. YouTube is by far the monopoly with over 50% on creator content.
It’s possible, but won’t have the same reach. Best bet would be switching to content type specific platforms like twitch.
When the bad blood is completely impersonal, maybe it is fair to say "It's been ten years, google should be required to forget". Especially if they're willing to repay the debt.
There are hundreds of millions of people at neutral with google. Letting someone reset to neutral doesn't harm them.
> Google doesn't trust you to honor your advertising contract because you didn't in the past
When this kind of logic gets sufficiently lazy it becomes discrimination.
Because it simply is not true that something someone did 20 years ago as a teenager is a good predictor of their behavior as a mature adult now. Applying that logic is essentially a lazy heuristic by a company that can't be bothered to do anything more than the most shallow fraud analysis. In the case of Google, which has such deep knowledge of its users and such a robust data analysis competency it is particularly egregious. They could probably figure out in a few seconds that this person is not really a high fraud risk. They simply don't care to bother doing so.
Not sure if this'll help your situation, but I did something equally dumb when I was back in high school. Clicked on my own ads, got banned from AdSense, etc. (Luckily, it didn't affect my other Google services at the time.)
Recently, however, a Google AdSense sales rep reached out to me trying to sell me on AdSense. I explained the past situation and that I was "banned", but this sales rep was apparently able to get that lifted and get me back into the program. I never ended up using AdSense, but I now have an open account that isn't blocked anymore. Might help in your situation if you ever run into a Google sales rep.
> I agree. Over a decade ago when I was a freshman in college I participated in an AdSense click ring with my dormmates. We made $200 or so each, which was cool at that age. Within a few months we got caught and banned from AdSense. Now I have a YouTube channel with tens of thousands of viewers but I can’t monetize it at all, even though YouTube wasn’t even part of the same company as AdSense when my silly freshman experiment went down.
If your viewers are recurrent, then you might want to ask them to support you via a 3rd channel such as patreon?
You need not lose revenue from the content you create through alphabets' vague rules and products.
If one wants to do a silly experiment with a Google account, it's a good idea to create a new Google account just for that, and not use the regular and important one.
If one has done some silly experiments in the past, it may be reasonable to create a new Google account as the "regular and important", and get email old redirected to it.
This kind of online hygiene will only become more and more important as online identities calcify.
I did use a different account, but Google is very good at tracing accounts back to the underlying person. Especially with AdSense, you've got to enter your SSN, which even if your email, address, phone, and whatever else are unblemished will cause the new account to get auto-flagged as well, which as far as I can tell then propagates to that email, phone, etc.
My YouTube account used to be somewhat separate, but during the whole Google Plus integration timeframe they forced you to tie it to your real identity. Which just goes to cement the original point of the dangers of using one master account for so many different services, things that used to be separate end up a mess. See also my various Skype, Zune, Xbox Live, MSDN, Office 365, and Windows accounts which cause me so much annoyance now that Microsoft has integrated a lot of the backend.
Anyway not trying to justify the questionable morals of a college freshman, but it's good to keep in mind the downstream effects of a seemingly minor infraction when multiplied by one corporation controlling so many different types of services.
I've tried. Sure I can create new accounts but Google is very good at tracing accounts back to the underlying person. Especially with AdSense, you've got to enter your SSN, which even if your email, address, phone, and whatever else are unblemished will cause the new account to get auto-flagged as well, which as far as I can tell then propagates to that email, phone, etc.
Correct. In theory I could get an EIN for my own company and use that instead, but that's more hoops than I'm willing to jump through and I'm not even 100% sure that would solve my problem, as they may tie it back to me another way.
Less scrupulous executives and managers at Google[0] could wield great power. For example, let's say you post something online that's critical of Google. Google may have the capability to trace it to you and then maybe your business doesn't appear as high in search results, or you have trouble with your YouTube channel. And how would you know? Who could you complain to?
Perhaps some regulation is needed, at least in areas where one company wields enormous market power.
[0] That may sound unlikely now, but executives come and go and things change rapidly. How do you think Uber under Kalanick would handle this kind of power, for example.
My best friend got locked out of his Google account over some videos he uploaded to YT in 2007. They got flagged only last month and his account got locked. He even has trouble with his Gapps on his Android phone.
I told him long time ago to deGoogle himself as much as possible but he didn't listen. Now he can't access anything. It's ridiculous. But that's Google for ya.
This happened to me too. in 2008 I uploaded a video clip from a rural Canadian TV station news show. In 2017 they finally got on the Web and immediately DMCA'd my ass. Luckily it was on an account I don't use anymore.
Yep, it's really annoying how Google forces all their services to be completely integrated together, and not even integrated well. Lots of issues with glitchy account switching.
Where does your account flack? I use my Google account for almost everything as I move from one thing to another and it is probably one of the biggest reasons I chose a Google service where given a choice.
I hate having to log in and remember passwords. So something like Google WiFi love able to just use my Google account. As well as Google photos, home, email, bookmarks, docs, drive, YT TV, YT Red, voice and even unlocking devices and such. Love even my wifi password being passed by my device instead of having to share.
I look forward to when my Google account unlocks my car and starts it.
I bought something from Google play when I was living in country x and now that I live in country y I cannot install anything that is limited to country y. In order to get Google to "forget" that I lived in country x I would have to give Google my credit card number that is located in country y. I don't want to change my address, all I want to do is make Google "forget" my old address.
Because of that I refuse to buy anything with my Google account
Exactly why I use Dropbox instead of Google Drive, my bank's Paywave app over Apple/Google Pay, Todoist over Google Tasks, and even Firefox over Chrome (because of bookmarks sync, addons sync, form fields, etc).
I can't split my Email from YouTube (which I really enjoy as products and am very active on YouTube), so if those get locked, I can still live most of my life.
You can, of course, do this yourself with separate accounts for each service, as long as the services are actually different and can be used separately.
For instance, I have a Google account for using Google (the search product), but a separate account for YouTube, and if I used Google Domains or Gmail, I would definitely have separate accounts for those things as well.
I think all-in-one accounts would work if the user themselves owned the data instead of Google; honestly I'm a bit annoyed that I need to have a separate account / identity for every webpage I visit.
Yup. Same reason I spread my risk with a bunch of Amazon products rather than stick to any one ecosystem. It's either that or abandon the whole system altogether.
Google's payment solutions are shockingly diverse. Google Checkout, Google Wallet, Android Pay, and now Google Pay. Checkout failed so they replaced it with Google Wallet; Wallet failed and they replaced it with Android Pay.
The Google Pay API developer site https://developers.google.com/payments/ has the audacity to call it "The newest way to pay with Google." I wouldn't be surprised to see yet another brand (and yet another API) within the next three years.
Also, they have had Hangouts, Messenger, Talk, Voice, Allo, and Duo... most with the same functionality. What is up with Google's product management? Is there a strategy?
Then they seem to randomly consolidate (I believe Hangouts was supposed to bring all that together, including SMS), only to do a complete 180 a few months later and split everything up again. I mean it's kind of absurd at this point.
The problem is, most of these sorts of services work via a network effect. Especially chat: You use the one all your friends are using. Payment is the one that all your accounts and stores you go to support.
Running a bunch of your own competitors is self-defeating when it ensures you don't have the network effect. Google Talk worked mostly because it was in Gmail, and everyone had Gmail. People who never used it had it, because Gmail.
Hmm, what? I think e.g. Talk/Hangouts and Voice are radically different: one is about text messaging and video calls, another is about a connection to the "legacy" voice telephony network, with a dial-able number, etc. They started (long ago) form very different areas.
They could have a seamless bridge between them, though. They sort of tried: you can dial a phone from Hangouts, but not back, or you can receive your Voice text messages in the email, but not send a reply back (afaict).
Google is notoriously bad at cohesive product management. They have a number of bright ideas, but no visionary in the consumer product space, so apparently no coordination.
Google Voice was a rebrand of a product acquired in 2009. Google Talk was an XMPP chat service launched in 2005, and integrated into Gmail in 2006. "+Hangouts" was originally a feature inside Google Plus, launched in 2011, just like "+Messenger". 'Google Hangouts' was a 2013 launch to bring Talk, +Messenger, and +Hangouts into one product. This was further blurred by their various apps, which sometimes had differing functionality from the websites.
The latest iteration of Google Voice has chat, for example, while SMS support inside the Hangouts Android App was removed on purpose and users told to use yet another app, first called Messenger, now called Messages.
All their communication products suffer from convergent evolution, yet remain in dizzyingly varying states of integration with each other.
Announced in January 2017, the Android, iOS, and Web versions of Google Voice have a revamped UI and, apparently, text chat [1]; discussed on HN at [2].
I use google voice and hangouts. I can both send and receive voice calls using my google voice number via hangouts. I can also send and receive sms message using my google voice number via hangouts. Both of these have been true for at least 4 years, maybe 5. They started trying to phase sms out of hangouts a few years back, but never removed it for google voice users.
I'm not sure I would characterize it as optimistic. The subtitle is "Fifth Times A Charm!" and the bulk of it is talking about how many times Google has (mostly unsuccessfully) tried to make a product in this space.
I find Ron Amadeo's articles are often much more critical of Google than others writing about them. If I were to summarize his attitude in much of his writing it'd be "Come on, you need to do better than this, Google." It's refreshing because normally writers who cover a particular company almost always view them through rose colored glasses and minimize all the mistakes.
I have a generally positive view of Ron's work, but there's been some tragic missteps of late. This is a trashfire of a piece justifying incredible incompetence by Google[1], and suggesting a major vulnerability 'isn't a big deal': https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/pixel-wont-get-krack...
[1]Google had months of notice under coordinated disclosure, and it took them a couple months after it went public for the fix to finally make it to Pixel devices (which is to say, most other Android devices still aren't patched). Since ROM authors fixed this in like two days, the fact that Google couldn't do it in five months is inexcusable. I actually suspect this may be part of why the Android Security Lead just shifted to a massively less important position at Google around the end of the year.
And it's still only credit cards. Like how many iterations can you possibly have on CC processing. Add debit and then it becomes a lot more useful, but no.
Most of the rest of the world uses debit, and as a result enjoy very low transaction fees. Credit cards have much higher, and highly variable, transaction fees that cost merchants and thus all consumers, money.
American credit card companies have lobbied successfully and now have blatantly anti-competitive most favored nation clauses that make it impossible for merchants to charge you anything other than the credit card price.
I always wondered why (at least in America) credit cards have more consumer protections? It's essentially the same way to use money, if someone steals from your credit card you're protected, but if it's debit card, it's not? Why?
Credit card fees in America are >2%, debit (and CC) is limited to <0.3% in Europe. So it makes sense for credit card companies in America to take the occasional loss and give out all those gimmicks as long as it keeps people paying mini-VAT on every purchase.
That's before you get into the whole "you gotta build credit" perversion that has Americans go into debt en masse and pay horrid fees on that.
If you are in a relatively healthy financial situation, you can also profit off of the system with many of the rewards card benefits in the last several years. One example of this is: https://reddit.com/r/churning
> It's essentially the same way to use money, if someone steals from your credit card you're protected, but if it's debit card, it's not?
Debit cards have some protections; the basic difference is that a credit card is spending someone else's money, which you have to pay back to them if it was actually authorized by you; a debit card is spending your money, which you can recover from the bank in certain circumstances if it is accepted to be unauthorized.
Actually some banks (if not all, I only really know about my own case with BofA) have protections with debit as well. I left my debit card in an ATM in Peru and someone took it and tried to buy jewelry. They succeeded in two purchases before being declined in the third (I assume for invalid PIN). They alerted me that there were some weird transactions and I was able to recover all $1200 that they spent on my card.
Sadly, the United States operates more on a credit system than relying on having cash or funds upfront. Society regresses towards that when people want things that cost more than what they can afford (e.g. homes, cars, college education). Side effect is that you will have people taking out unnecessary loans just to build up a credit.
It’s not difficult to build credit in the U.S. without resorting to maintaining debt, nor accepting unnecessary loans. The credit scoring models in place strongly favor many open, revolving accounts, but also favor the continual paying off of those accounts and maintaining zero balances on the majority of one’s revolving accounts. The scoring models favor low utilization of large amounts of available credit — that the credit in question needs to be in the form of a loan or a fixed line is false.
It’s accurate to say that the U.S. operates on credit moreso than it does on cash, but the rating methods genuinely favor those who have the means to manage credit wisely and pay off revolving balances in full, which is antithetical to the notion of societal “regressions”.
They're not stupid, surely they must know that constant change and fragmentation of their products just weakens thier offer to the consumer?
Whats their gameplan? Are they just throwing as much as they can against the wall to see what sticks, a survival of the fittest attitute to their apps?
Why do you assume they are not stupid? Individuals and groups even at companies that are, on average, pretty smart can easily be really really incompetent. I think this is really common at google where they have lots of awesome products but still many seem either abandoned or led by people who are misguided.
It's incredibly frustrating because if you look at something like their messaging strategy, it makes no sense. They come out with a new way to message people seemingly every year and then abandon it instead of building on their base and giving consumers the things they actually want.
In this case, it's a welcome consolidation of different existing wallet/payment products.
All large companies seem to have trouble with branding as politics take over and each group wants to have its own spotlight. Apple arguably had better luck due to strong centralized leadership, although that's also become undone in recent years.
This is quite literally a consolidation in name only. "Google Pay" is a brand name for all of those products, not a unified API. Hopefully a unified product strategy will follow…
From what I've read, that's always been the way the company operates. I read on here years ago that Google 'regularly cuts off its own limbs', and never seen it so succinctly put.
Eh, it's just a way to get your existing CC information to existing payment gateways without having to re-enter it. If you have a problem you would contact the company you're trying to pay or your credit card issuer, not Google. Pretty much like Apple Pay.
Huh I had quite a miserable time with Project Fi customer service. Phone calls, emails and chat failed to resolve my issue. Only after countless Tweets / Reddit posts / Official Google product support forum posts that went on for nearly a week did I get lucky and finally talk to someone who could help me.[1]
They gave me $50 off a month's bill at the end of all of it but it was such a frustrating ordeal. You couldn't pay me $500 to do it all over again. Their customer service is a joke. After spending time on their product support forums, I was far from alone.
I think I've only seen one person pay with Apple Pay in the last four years. It was at Walgreens.
Maybe I'm missing something obvious but please do tell me HN readers do you use Apple Pay or Android pay at all ? and if you do use it how often every month?
America is far behind the curve compared to the rest of the world. About the only place I use Apple Pay in the US is at Starbucks. But in the UK, I literally use it for everything. Restaurants, the London tube, taxis, pubs (to pay for a round of drinks!). It's incredibly useful, and it amazes me that America is taking so long to adopt it.
Even more amazing is that the US even changed payment systems to a chip-based system just a couple of years ago, but apparently didn't mandate that everyone adopts contactless payment when updating their hardware. Foolish.
Ha, you should visit Germany. Apple Pay doesn't even exist here [0]. Contactless payments with debit cards are slowly becoming a thing, but that seems to be the height of it.
Well, that is more like a German thing then a Apple Pay/Google Pay thing. Credit cards are frowned upon in Germany, so the acceptance is pretty low compared to other places in the world. Most chains nowadays support card payments but it is still not accepted anywhere. And even stores that accept cards, they will most likely only accept “EC cards”. EC cards are German debit cards that only work in Germany (though some banks offer dual card which use the EV system in Germany and maestro aboard). They have very low fees compared to credit cards though (I believe it is only 15cents per Guaranteed transaction but their pricing model is very confusing).
Credit cards are accepted prettily reliable in supermarkets such as Rewe and Aldi but even other big (and more expensive chains) such as Edeka often only accept EC cards, which is pretty frustrating. EC cards are accepted at more places but you can still find many restaurants that don’t accept any cards at all and many local stores will laugh at you when you try to use anything but cash. If you find a place that takes them, chances are they have some restrictions such as that cards are only accpected for purchases over a certain amount (amount being 10€ or 20€). Most taxis don’t accept them either and those that do charge a 3€ fee.
Whenever I’m with my family and they see me buy a coke or anything under 10€ using my credit card they feel somewhat ashamed because they are not sure why I would do that. Most of them take a credit card quite literally: you only use it when you want to buy something you cannot afford and have to take a credit for that. Now when they see my checking out, they are often surprised how quick the process is (it often takes only a second from them activating they terminal until my card is accept but some stores use slow devices which can take up to 5 seconds).
The reason why we don’t have Apple Pay at all is because we don’t accept cards. And when we accept credit cards, chances are they are also contactless. The only place that didn’t have them are my gas station and the pet store (though the pet store upgraded recently). This means, if you are a foreigner and you find a place that takes a credit card, you can use Apple Pay but the store clerk might be confused and call their manager (they once did that to me when I used contact less payments because they did not know you could use your card like that and also I did not enter my pin and the receipt had no sign here line. They still made my sign the receipt though).
Yeah, you're right. They mostly are a thing now, at least in bigger stores (as in chains). But I do have a feeling Germany is one of the last countries where there's loads of stores where cash is the only accepted option.
Is Apple Pay compatible with those "contactless" debit cards they have in London/UK?
What I mean is, if in the UK I go to a Boots and I ask to pay contactless, can I use apple pay? thanks
You can't "mandate" stuff like that in the US like you mandate everything in the EU. Chip readers at least had a security prerogative and most places still don't have that enabled because it's slow and doesn't work half the time.
I'm in the USA. At first I loved it, and used it often, but the main problem for me was that it's buggy as hell. 80% of the time it works, 20% of the time the merchant's terminal freaks out and I have to whip out my card anyway, so it wastes time and the people behind me in line wonder why I am trying to do some fancy thing with my phone rather than just use the card that works. After that happened about a dozen times I just stopped using it.
As a Canadian with a NFC credit card, I was blown away at how rare they are in the US. It's funny because the devices used by most stores support them, but the clerks are always blown away when I use it.
That being said, now that I live here with a non-NFC credit card, I use Android Pay for most my payments. Tapping is far easier than swipe + sign.
Yeah, some US companies actually trialed NFC and Chip+PIN years ago on some of the higher end cards (my friend had one of these, but I can't for the life of me remember what card it was. I think it was issued by Wells Fargo or Chase) but reverted back to the "standard" Chip+Signature when all other banks were deciding on this platform.
I saw a clerk's mind blow when my parents used their Canadian cards to tap to pay. It's sad that it's such a stretch to see it happening because it shows how incredibly far off the US is in terms of payment technologies. I miss having NFC on all my cards. :(
I believe there's a price limit on it, it's mostly for small transactions. Also, pre-chip cards only need a signature, which is easily faked. Most bank insure your card.
I use it every day on the London Underground. Wave my phone near the barrier and it opens.
I used it most days on holiday in Italy, whether paying for groceries or at restaurants.
There are only two things which stop me using it more often - there's a limit of £30(?) for contactless transactions, and one of my credit cards isn't supported.
It’s a little unclear, but I seem to remember reading places that accept “Apple Pay” rather than just general NFC are supposed to be exempt from the limit (different back ends), but it’s super-unclear when you can do this so always easier to assume you can’t than look like an idiot.
Well, except that quite a few shops with Apple Pay specifically, offer essentially unlimited. I bought a couple of hundred quids worth of food at Waitrose using my phone when I;d left my wallet at home
I'm in Australia and don't carry a wallet around anymore.
Apple Pay has my VISA & Amex in it. I live in Sydney and I would say 95% of merchants who accept credit card have terminals which support contact-less payments. I have found this to be such a great implementation of technology.
My VISA card was ripped off when buying something online (not using Apple Pay) and my bank was able to cancel that card and push a new card to my phone pretty much within minutes. My Apple Pay experience had effectively zero downtime while I waited a few days for a new CC to be mailed to me.
If I see the contactless payment logo I'll usually reach for my phone instead of my credit card because chip readers are agonizingly slow.
Android users: did you know you can add shortcuts to specific cards to your home screen? Pretty neat even though I tend to use my default card for the vast majority of POS purchases.
None of my credit cards do at the moment. I've had 1 or 2 in the past but the issuer replaced them with non-contactless cards (I think Chase Slate even claimed removing contactless was for security reasons)
I use Apple Pay quite a bit in NYC! From my experience, most contactless NFC readers at payment terminals accept it just fine, but maybe I've been lucky. I even use it in cabs!
US here - I use it all the time now that chip readers are widespread. Apple Pay is drastically faster than chip readers, especially when you're wearing an apple watch already.
[I'm an Apple engineer, but not working in, or speaking for, that department]
Apple Pay is great when it works, and it's my default method of payment. I rarely use it on the phone, but I love using it on the Apple Watch. It's rare enough that I still get double takes from vendors all around the world.
In the US, lots of credit cards are compatible with Apple pay, but contactless POS are still rare, and occasionally they get disabled (IIRC Walgreens disabled theirs for a while).
In Europe, the problem is the opposite: Contactless POS are ubiquitous, but in many countries, only niche CC providers support Apple pay. This is not too dissimilar from carrier support in the early years of iPhone, though, and I can see the situation improving over time.
All of my cards were contactless in 2015, I'd been doing contactless payments for 5+ years (in the few places it was possible). But then the greedy, inept, and cheap American card issuers ripped out RFID in favor of only contact EMV chip, instead of going with dual chipped cards like pretty much the rest of Europe.
And as merchants had to pay their own way to comply with the new chip requirements, they too mostly went the cheap route, which was to buy POS systems that support chip, not chip and RFID.
The reason we have contact only cards, is issuers. The reason we have chip and sign, is issuers. They want the American consumer to have as many cards as possible, and different PINs for each card discourages having a wallet of 10 cards.
I use Apple Pay regularly (multiple times per month) at Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Starbucks and Coffee Bean. On more rare occasions when I do end up shopping for cloths in person, I've used it at department stores.
It replaced my credit card wherever NFC is enabled (so basically everywhere except that one noodle place). So 11 times over the last week. I'm based in Oz though, so we seem to be ahead of the US with payments.
I use Apple Pay regularly because getting my phone + doing Touch ID is faster than getting a card out of my wallet, and I tend to use it at most stores that accept it (which is usually just larger chains, I think).
I always try it because it works really well when you're somewhere it's supported but I still feel like I'm half reaching for my wallet every time I use it, just in case it fails.
My local grocery store (3min walk from my house) supports it, most coffee shops and drug stores and the like do as well. Hell, I don't even carry my wallet most days.
I got some odd looks using it in Canada and NZ but that was when apple pay was newer; I think it was about using my phone, not about contactless.
I use Apple pay 3-4 times a week. Here in Canada we have contactless payments at most pay machines. The retailer doesn't need anything special for Apple Pay.
i no longer carry a wallet in Australia. everywhere i go, everyone accepts apple pay (or android pay or whatever its called now) - from supermarkets to small coffee merchants to thrift stores to even the local markets on a weekend. Having also lived in america for 2 years also, there is a big disparity between american and the rest of the world.
I wind up using Android Pay about once a month, but primarily because it also holds loyalty cards. I only EVER use Android pay for payment when there's also a loyalty card relevant, because otherwise I forget. I forget because so few places I shop seem to even take NFC payments, and half the devices that say they do don't work.
In Canada, a lot of credit and debit cards are NFC-enabled. I discovered that the NFC-enabled payment terminals will take a payment via Apple Pay just as though it was a plastic card.
I've only seen two businesses actually advertise that they take Apple Pay, but I've used it at countless businesses that don't advertise it.
I've used it a couple times to buy something from a website on my phone. That makes it handy because I don't need to fill in CC info and whatnot. But yeah I rarely use it except in that case, Walgreens, or maybe one or two other stores.
Plus bigger stores like Target still don't support it.
I pay for pretty much everything with Apple Pay. All of the supermarkets here in NJ accept Apple Pay. The convenience of using my watch to pay is great - and much faster than the chip card readers.
In London, I was able to use Apple Pay to pay for all of my subway and bus rides directly.
In California. Most of my POS transactions use Apple Pay. It's much faster than the chip. Of the businesses I visit routinely, I only pull out my wallet at restaurants, Target, and one of three local grocers.
Why would you use contactless payment when phone manufacturers actively withhold NFC functionality from their phones costing below $400 (in the US)? If they wanted wide adoption they wouldn't do that.
I use Apple Pay every chance I get. I'm not a big shopper, but I use it probably 3 to 4 times a month. I use it because it's faster than chip and signature, and more secure.
I'm in the US, and I use Apple Pay everywhere that I can, which now feels like the majority of places I shop. Still, some major chains still refuse to support it; CVS comes to mind.
When I'm in town (Cupertino area,) I use Apple Pay almost everywhere. I love it. France just recently got it, so I'm looking forward to being able to use it more.
I can pay for the bus here in Portland with it. That's pretty nice. Outside of that and McDonald's though, I haven't seen many places that support NFC.
Really? I'm in a reasonably rural area but pretty much every PoS I hit now accepts Apple pay. Probable 80-90% at least? It's not always obvious the PoS supports it by looking at it
I have a credit card with an NFC chip built in. I enjoy swiping my wallet over the payment terminal and mystifying people at stores with what I just did.
The toughest part of immigrating from Canada to the U.S. was figuring out the mess that was Google Play Store, Google Wallet, Google Payment Profiles, and Google Pay to get myself recognized as being in the U.S. and thus able to download U.S.-only apps.
I'm in the same boat but in reverse having moved from the US to the UK. The worst part is most banks restrict their app downloads to the country they are located in. So I have to decide whether I want my US banking apps on my phone or my UK banking apps.
I believe this process has been improved in the last year to more easily change your country. I'm not sure when you went through it, but understand that it can be a complicated problems due to different regulations for payment related activity and digital goods. Like some countries Google is required to verify your tax id with the government to even buy 99 cent app.
I wasn't able to get my country changed after I somewhat accidently opened a merchant account years ago. I have never used that merchant account. It also didn't tell me that I won't be able to change my country if I open one.
I've now been living in the UK for six months and three months ago I had a 3hr phone call with a very lovely support lady that tried to help but we didn't manage to change it. She told me that maybe I could just open a new account but then I said that my whole life is on this account and that is not an option. If I have to start over I'd rather make sure this won't happen again.
I can't compare it to how it was before but when I lived in my old country I bought something on Google play and now that I am in my new country I cannot download anything that is restricted to that country. There is no way that I can revert to how it was before I gave Google my credit card information. What I can do is give Google my new credit card information, but I don't want to do that simply to download a free country restricted app. What I ended up doing was making a new google play account and not purchasing anything through Google.
Are they trying to manage their projects with some kind of AI? Google works in mysterious ways and I don’t understand most of what they do outside of Google search.
There is probably a lack of executive tlc to go around for all their stuff. I don't get it either, they break things that work already -- I simply cannot trust anything they put out that isn't search/Android/Google AI stuff anymore. Wasn't there some heuristic that a large company can only have 3 strategic priorities? Guess these 3 are it.
They shouldn't keep renaming products, especially when they don't control the ecosystem. I know a few apps and many merchants that still have Google Wallet branding - which should have been updated to Android Pay two years ago. Now there is another layer of confusion.
Why did Google cut Android Pay out of Wallet if they were just going to do this? It's as if Google's consumer product teams all turn over every 2 years and each one reverses the vision of unity vs fragmented, specialized, self-competing products, executes their vision, and then leaves...
> Why did Google cut Android Pay out of Wallet if they were just going to do this?
They didn't. Android Pay was a renamed of an acquisition that was originally planned to be integrated with Wallet but wasn't (well, until now), it just looked like it was cut out of Wallet because they killed Waller’s similar NFC payment functionality. From the fact that they now for a while have had “pay with Google” that can use cards from Wallet, Android Pay, and some other superficially siloed single-app payment systems at Google, I would assume they’ve actually finally integrated everything to use the same infrastructure as Android Pay, so now the siloes can go away.
Very interesting insight into what happened on the technical side!
The progression of events certainly does make a lot more sense with that perspective, though understanding the details of what actually happened inside the backend doesn't really change the fact that, from a customer perspective, we really did see public-facing messaging indicating that one app was split into two and then later public-facing messaging indicting that (more than) those two apps where then brought back together again a couple years later.
More like each newly turned over product team always makes a https://xkcd.com/927/ decision, and only gets 80% through to completion before the next batch decides to do-over yet again.
I am at least happy they are going to stop abusing the "Android" brand. Android became popular primarily because it offered an open source solution that manufacturers and phone byers could heavily customize (you can argue whether that's a good idea, but that was its main value proposition nonetheless). That Google took as a brand and then started exploiting it to push products that are entirely closed and have no real connection whatsoever to the actual core value proposition associated with Android has always irked me.
This bit is a little buried, but it's the biggest win IMO:
> With Google Pay, it’ll be easier for you to use the payment information saved to your Google Account
On the web/in Android apps this allows you to pay with any credit card stored on your Google account. If you're on an Android device you can use your Android Pay card as well. Both with the same API for an ecommerce website or app.
G Pay is not a bank, it's payment processor like Stripe. They don't hold any money. Though you are right that this gives them information about what you're purchasing.
Well, it's not exactly a payment processor either. They're like a payment initiator. They funnel the payments through your processor in the end, according to their docs: https://payments.google.com/solutions/onboarding/
Has Google said what they do with the information they collect when people use Google Pay? Does it get added to my profile? I don't see anything under "My Account" on the Google website.
I'm not surprised there's yet another rebranding in Google world. You can pretty much track rebranding, not based on features or coherency, but rather someone being promoted. And on top of it, the Peter Principle has been thrown out the window so we get shit that's constantly being replaced with different shit, because when you're not improving Ux the only thing left to make your job relevant is to make the Ux different.
One thing to consider: Google Pay, at least now, checks if bootloader is unmodified. This means it wont't work for you on many devices if you prefer installing pure android (like AOSP) instead of vendor provided. Uniting online payments under one google Pay umbrella will make experience for such people (me including) worse. Would be nice if Googlers would consider this.
The alt attribute text for the large "G Pay" logo is not "Google Pay" as one would expect but the cheerful "Google Pay Lockup". Who or what is being locked up is up for you to decide.
Glad they're doing this. I found myself wondering just last week, "Do I want Google Pay or Google Wallet? Which is which? Can one hold my library card bar code?"
Across their diverse payment solution names, they actually have all the tech to build a Stripe competitor. Looks like they finally got their act together (hopefully!).
I would trust Stripe more to not cancel my account and forbid me from ever making/receiving money again. I also trust Stripe more to not disappear with my money on the process.
Information security and capital security (they not declaring bankruptcy or running away with my money) are low enough to ignore for both.
They could also take on Square by moving the "confirm, sign, tip, send receipt" aspect of Square (basically the entire interface) to the phone anywhere there is a payment system that takes tap to pay which more and more is basically everywhere. Unfortunately google doesn't agree and the actual payment experience is so shitty and limited it is a joke.
You know what bothers me about giants like Google? They can absolutely suck at delivering an app or service for many years but because of their vast resources, they can keep throwing people and money at their projects until something sticks. Makes it very difficult for even very competent startups to compete against them.
I might start caring about Google/Apple pay if they add support for Bitcoin and lightning network payments. Until then, there's really nothing new or innovative to be seen here.
Google has done this so many times now (Hangouts/Allo/Messenger, anyone?) that I wonder if there is anyone behind the wheel any more.