FacePay?
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Uhm, what? What they did was forcing their users to open up a separate app to do something with was working great already within the app, without having to open up a separate app. But now every time you want to do messaging, you have to wait the extra two seconds for "Messenger" to open up. What a terrible example by the TechCrunch author. Maybe he was ironic?
They also didn't want to split the user experience of using Facebook messenger on mobile and hence the forced switch.
It was only a big deal because of the surface area of the world that the main Facebook product (w/ messenger) covers. I guarantee you that if Google did something like that no one would care (at least not enough to give 20,000+ 1 star reviews)
This reminds me of the talk "Is it really Complex? Or did we just make it Complicated?" by Alan Kay.
The complexity of the underlying problem, messaging, has not changed, but FB has made it a lot more complicated.
And having the same functionality in two apps is not a good idea in any scenario.
Not complaining, just sharing my experience.
Like Google I imagine they do actually try to protect the data they have beyond what I explicitly share at least to the extent it's not sold (I'm assuming they use the same model as Google and sell ads from the data instead of just selling the data, but their ads are so badly targeted it's hard to tell).
That said I don't see myself giving them financial details because I don't really know what they do with data that's not explicitly shared by users (which like I said has become a lot clearer) and I don't really particularly trust them. Plus I'd be amazed if they ever managed to show an ad I was remotely interested in.
It's not friction if you have to smile and say hello to the guy at the apple cart before you buy your apples.
Exactly. There is Paypal. Afaik, Amazon and Google discontinued their similar service that was in competition with Paypal (API for third party website payments) - but why? (I think that were the services: Amazon WebPay, Google Checkout)
This is why no one should ever use Google for any critical function that may require support (cloud servers etc.). Google just doesn't do the whole "human" thing very well. If it goes terribly wrong and they refuse to talk to you, good luck suing them unless you are a Fortune 500 company.
Especially if Google wrongfully kept the money from many customers. I would think some government run institutions would get going. Something like the "public prosecutor's office" or so.
At a medium scale (in # of cases), you might find a law firm willing to take on a lot of cases, in exchange for a big cut. You can also choose to pursue your own situation individually.
At a small scale (just your case let's say, and a small'ish sum of money), you're going to mostly be limited to small claim's court, which can work perfectly well sometimes:
http://consumerist.com/2008/01/21/suing-big-companies-in-sma...
Most likely what Google is doing, is dancing in the gray area. For example, is it criminal when PayPal hits you with a chargeback because a customer lies about x y or z? Given their size there's no question they do that a lot. Google would argue their business choices, like shutting down someone's wallet account (with money in it), falls into a similar category of business discretion - rather than being criminal.
This is why almost all of what the SEC does is civil enforcement, fines, etc. In business there are almost always cases of financial loss due to ignorance, incompetence, discretion, risk taking and so on - most of that is not properly going to be criminal, but rather civil.
Were Google doing something inappropriate in an area involving business discretion, the government may decide it's not ok, but not criminal (eg lacking the intention to defraud). In that case, they'll typically try to put a stop to the behavior, and use fines to do so. At times it can be incredibly difficult to show a company is intending to defraud its customers, the Feds would need a hard trail of evidence (emails, communication, etc. showing Google was trying to defraud customers).
BBB doesn't benefit by alienating businesses or making it "difficult" to resolve complaints, and they have no obligation to actually help the consumer. There are a lot of shady companies with really good BBB ratings.
BBB is on its way out I think, superseded by crowdsourced review sites. People don't check BBB ratings very often anymore.
That's what the civil justice system is for.
> Especially if Google wrongfully kept the money from many customers. I would think some government run institutions would get going.
There's some government institutions (other than the courts themselves) that might have authority to initiate action in certain cases, but in general "not paying out funds the way I think is required based on the contract I have with you" is the kind of thing handled through private actions in the civil justice system.
> Something like the "public prosecutor's office" or so.
While its possible that anything wrong Google might have done might rise to the level of a criminal, rather than civil, wrong, none of the descriptions I've seen point to anything that (even if the descriptions are presumed to be completely correct) seems obviously criminal.
The point was it used to be easy to use their services outside in the open internet on normal websites like Paypal.
Also I don't think Amazon or Google have a TouchID payment system.
The only question is if the payment processors and Apple/Google will leave the door open wide enough.
But I was kind of waiting for Youtube competant from Facebook for sometime now. I think Facebook is one of the major sources for Youtube and FB has ability to do something about it.
Do the G+ comments below YT videos make sense? No (from the users point of view) . There used to be insightful replies to YT comments including video-replies. All that has vanished, only spam remains. Beside that, anyone remember their older social hubs Google Buzz and Orkut?