Google will launch buy buttons on its search-results pages | Hacker News Reader

Google will launch buy buttons on its search-results pages

wsj.com

60 pointswalterbell28 comments

Interesting how power is being consolidated all the time, creating stronger monopolies: Facebook taking control over publishers by integrating their content. Now Google taking control over suppliers by creating the sales lead/conversion. Power consolidation just like what happened with the banks.

The end result means less competition, higher prices, less democracy, more mass surveillance and population control/manipulation.

The Internet is becoming the opposite from what it was in its early days.

The solution is (or something like) https://ethereum.org

The giants currently have all the control because they own the contact to the consumer. What would be the mechanism that motivates the lazy consumer to switch away from what he knows and loves?

Yeah true. Though one way it could play out is that the existing behemoths transition from a centralized company structure to a decentralized algorithmic structure to save costs.

If the "boring" functions of big tech companies can be automated, at some point it makes sense to just spin that out into a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) aka smart contract/s on a platform like Ethereum. The company still receives the tiny transaction fee from that running contract, but they don't need any employees/infrastructure/costs so overall revenue wouldn't be affected from the change.

Consumer-facing nothing will have changed. Same apps, same beautiful interfaces. But 99% of the backend business operations will be performed by distributed, decentralized algorithms running on a blockchain.

Particularly as the sharing economy unicorns scale (Uber, Airbnb etc) they are essentially becoming the single interface and algorithm to entire industries. Uber will become the single monopolized UI to the entirety of all transport (people/food/parcels) with some other minor competitors.

But Uber can very easily be decentralized. And actually the bigger they get, the easier it will be to decentralize them as a third party (because the trained workforce and behaviour is established, and will gravitate on economics... lower prices, higher wages). And so hopefully the costs, competition, monopoly legal issues and scaling pressures (at 1B+ users) will encourage Uber itself to decentralize and run their entire operations transparently on a blockchain.

Maybe in some other capacity Google/Facebook/Apple/Microsoft/Amazon will follow suit. Though personally I'm looking forward to a world where sharing 24/7 video and audio feeds to the cloud for processing is seen as normal. Collecting all human input/output data is the first step in my opinion toward building a super AI around humanity. Google and Facebook's centralized nature is capturing the most data at the moment, so they're best positioned.

/2c

This is wishcasting coupled with curious but fact-free supposition.

Maybe a better question is: why would people rationally do anything you want?

If the internet is becoming democratic, what explains the increasing number of new, massive and independent internet businesses?

VC's funding $$ hoping that they will be bought by said monopolies in < 5 years?

> The Internet is becoming the opposite from what it was in its early days.

The Internet is unchanged. You don't have to use any of these private services that run on top of it. You can still run your own, and you can still reach any IP on the 'net. Now faster than you used to. What's to complain about?

psa: "Can Google Outsell Amazon and eBay?" is the title of the article (enter the article page via google search if hit with a silly paywall / register page)

Anyways ... ... in my opinion, there is no way Google can outdo Amazon, it is not the "one click" button that makes me shop on Amazon but the great customer support who go out of their way to help you.

Google on the other hand and "support" have never belonged in the same sentence :( Seems like "providing support" to customers is to "low brow" for Google, and I am an avid google product user both hardware and software.

I'm always wary of the "great customer support" gambit. I mean, of course everybody likes great customer support, but who actually makes everyday purchase decisions based on hearsays about customer support quality?

I'm not talking about business threatening decisions (like relying on a free Google API, or tying your hosting to your registrar). But for most purchases at worst you will lose the money tied to it, which is probably not that big a deal.

Few weeks ago I ordered stationaries from an obscure Japanese website I had never heard about before, for my Japanese tea subscription service [1]. Total cost was around ¥4500 (~$37). I didn't hesitate, worst case I would have lost ¥4500. Turned out everything went very smoothly and I will certainly buy from them again. But maybe they have dreadful customer support, how could I know?

Next time I look for something online maybe Google will propose me a "Buy Now" button. And maybe I will give it a try, what could possibly go wrong? At worst I will lose a few bucks?

[1] Tomotcha (https://tomotcha.com)

You found that Japanese stationery company via the www? So in your searches you may have seen "buy from X, they're great", followed by a bunch of people either saying "steer clear they ripped me off they're scum" or "I frequently buy from them. I had a problem once but they sorted it out really quickly"[1]

Also, in UK google might face some legal problems with distance selling regs unless they sort out the customer support stuff.

[1] if you place fake reviews having a few like this is probably a good idea. It's much more preferable to me to see things like this than a bunch of five star great reviews.

I've had PayPal freeze an account and ask for two metric tons of paperwork to unfreeze it 48 hours before launching a SaaS business. Postponed the launch by a week, not such a big deal compared to if had been the other way around. I learned my lesson to be very careful on who I rely on for my business.

That said, I'm only careful in proportion to the risk: why spend much time reading random reviews for a small purchase?

Especially (to go back to the subject of the thread) if it's to buy something from a big brand like Google: I'm certain to find both good and bad reviews, both fake and real. I'll just try and see by myself. Small risk for me. Huge risk for Amazon...

I had paypal almost kill my business a few years back by freezing thousands of €'s for 6 months and telling me bye bye despite me providing all the relevant business and personal documents they required.

I haven't bothered with paypal or ebay since. Hell with them.

BTW thats another plus for Amazon, their giftcard program. Beside being able to buy them with cash in any shop one can get amazon.com giftcard on gyft.com for bitcoin and save 3% (or more if want to risk localbitcoins.com) and then go shopping on Amazon.

And I prefer the way they group all sellers under the same item and delivery charges + taxes are clearly displayed up front. None of those cringe-worthy ebay pages with HUGE FONTS and misleading delivery information.

A decade ago I had great Amazon support, missing books were resent and all problems solved fast.

In Germany I had very crappy Amazon customer service experience the last 2yrs. Problems with payments, fraud, washing machine delivery without taking back the old one although I had paid for that, etc. Worst was a stolen mobile phone (during delivery), where Amazon support gave wrong instructions during several interactions and then failed to cancel the attached carrier contract for months (blaming it on their system) which blocked me to get a new contract b/c I was banned for 6 months by German carriers.

In none of the cases Amazon did help in any positive way. Payments and fraud was only solved after I went to the police.

At least here Amazon support changed directions from 'happy customer' to 'cheap as possible'.

I wonder why my karma was bashed for this comment.

Same for me, I buy on Amazon for the quality of the reviews, the fact that if there is a problem with the delivery or the product received, I just send an email an everything is solved. In order for this to work, Google will have to improve tremendously their customer service, if they are doing it like in the Play Store and Adwords, it's just not going to work.

And/or Google could enter the review business.

The support question is really interesting. If Google is the company that takes the money, they will be the company that people would expect to handle refunds, returns and general support. Unless Google is planning something new, there's no way that they are geared to deal with the barrage of consumer support issues that will appear.

I don't see why the majority of online resellers would be concerned by being "reduced" to "back-end order takers". That's the easy part of the business, while payment and customer support is the expensive and annoying part. Most consumers are not loyal to any one online reseller anymore, Amazon excluded perhaps.

If I was to pick where I would want to be in terms of online retail in the future, I would want to be the business with the warehouse and just supply eBay, Amazon, Google and any direct shipping customer I could find. That's where the money is in the future, at least that's what I believe.

> I don't see why the majority of online resellers would be concerned by being "reduced" to "back-end order takers".

They may have outsourced that to Amazon Fulfilment already.

So now Google is the Uber of Amazon...?

Google has no support service is becoming a silly meme. Some of their products indeed seem to be almost integrally managed by algorithms. On the other hand, just yesterday I reported a problem with my nexus tablet through the assistance app. Two minutes later, I was extremely surprised to get a call from a Google representative. After a couple of minutes of discussion, they are going to send me a replacement tablet right away. If they want to put the resources behind a support department for another of their products, they are perfectly able to procure a good service.

FWIW I had the same good support experience regarding Nexus tablet failures. The cynical side of me thinks that this is one reason they are rumored to be canning the Nexus tablet line. Support costs are too high.

FWIW, Google's support for the Google Express shopping and delivery service is top-notch, at least Amazon quality. You usually get same day responses to any inquiries and Google is quick on the refund trigger - giving you refunds and coupons even before figuring out what the root cause of the problem was.

This too, will fail - just like almost all the other things Google has stuck its nose where it doesn't belong.

In fact if I recall correctly Google also experimented a couple years ago with a "email signup" field in search ads, but that doesn't seem to have gone anywhere. Not that it is surprising because if you are searching for something, would you really "interact" with it before clicking the link? Save for a few exceptions, like Google Now-ish results (i.e. information), it doesn't make sense.

They are already facing monopoly charges in various country, this will definitely hasten the results of these.

I wonder what made them choose this time to reveal such a feature.

If Google improves their customer service, I would give them a shot. Their domain name register seems to function well.

Personally, I don't have any loyality to Amazon. It's just another big company who slowly raised their prices, along with spotty customer service.

I don't know why companies get to a certain level of success and change--thinking customers won't notice? I saw this happen to Costco. They changed their "complete customer satisfaction policy" and they did me a favor; I only buy what I need from the store.

Not just electronics, but every product is affected. They still sell grey market luxury watches--that you can't return, and if they break--Costco Horologists repair them. The manufacturer wants nothing to do with watches bought at Costco. Products bought at Costco are scrutinized by a low level employee when you return an item. If you are a dramatic person the store manager might overrule the counter person. It's just not worth the effort anymore. I will take Costco to court when my Omega stops working--just on principle. "It's a great deal sir. If it stops, just return it. It's a no brainer. That's what's great about our store!"

So bring on the competition! I don't buy like I used to. My purchases right now are for survival.

> The buttons will accompany sponsored—or paid—search results...

Big Fail! The retailers that pay Google for the listings have little chance of being the cheapest place to purchase. So this endeavor will degrade into providing either sales for services where prices are meaningless or sales for non-comparable high-markup items. Anyone remember Groupon?

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