Or wipe out the low commission fee competition in the payment processor space.
If the US had better anti-competitive enforcement I feel like this is akin to the Internet Explorer/Netscape/Microsoft case, in them using one monopoly (search) to take over another market (same hook too: "free").
Plus you know they're going to reward sites for using this in their search rankings (or just outright place them at the top).
I think reward, but it is pretty cunning, the rewarded sites get better placement so better profit so it will be easy for others to see how google outperforms to other solutions.
Look like they aren't doing payment processing. They're partnering with Paypal and Shopify. So by "commission-free" that would mean the commission on top of payment processing?
Love how baseless allegations like "reward in search rankings" are heeded here. If I write something egregious without a source against Duck Duck Go I'd be downvoted to oblivion
Google is pretty strict about not artificially rewarding sites in the organic rankings. (ie. non-ads and non-infoboxes).
However, despite that those sites will get an implicit reward - if users go to these sites, and find a slick easy checkout and low prices, the site will satisfy their need. Google's goal is to put sites that satisfy the users search request at the top.
So, assuming this new Google service is any good, then sites that use it will end up upranked just because those sites satisfy users more than other sites.
Intuitively I don't like the idea of Google controlling everything but based on the reason you gave it sounds like this would be a good idea right? Customers get a better experience in the end.
Yes, although it ignores 2ndary effects (eg. Google takes over payments market, all other competitors go bankrupt, Google stops innovating because no competition, users lose out because no innovation).
That happened in things like Google Reader - users loved the service so much the industry for RSS readers died and stagnated, hurting users...
What is happening with AMP ? The pages load faster. They made it clear they will reward page load times in ranking. They have made no such shopping related claim here.
Implement AMP and get rewarded with a carousel position (ie. better rankings). Implement a faster-than-amp experience using plain HTML+CSS and get... at worst: nothing. At best: you'll get up-ranked slightly.
But, no matter how much faster (or better) your page, you will never, ever, be above, or in the carousel.
How do you consider that "baseless"? It's obvious that Google rewards sites that do things the way it dictates.
If the US had better anti-competitive enforcement I feel like this is akin to the Internet Explorer/Netscape/Microsoft case, in them using one monopoly (search) to take over another market (same hook too: "free").
Plus you know they're going to reward sites for using this in their search rankings (or just outright place them at the top).